


The Briar and the Rose

by OrionLady



Series: Heartbeats [2]
Category: Stargate - All Media Types, Stargate SG-1
Genre: Angst, Closure, End of an era, Epic Friendship, Families of Choice, Featuring my deep-seated love for mvp Walter Harriman, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Intergalactic Manhunt, Mental Anguish, Mystery, Past Character Death, Poisoning, Reconciliation, Secrets, Team as Family, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-17
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2020-12-21 04:17:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 18
Words: 29,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21068702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OrionLady/pseuds/OrionLady
Summary: Daniel hates Jack due to a dark incident two years ago on PX-725. But when a retired Jack breaks into the base and goes through the stargate, dying and searching for something, Daniel is the only one who can bring him home. Daniel and Jack have been outrunning death since they opened the ‘gate.They would not outrun this one. Sam suddenly knew it with agonizing clarity.Or: The story of how SG-1 died.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This story is set two years after the end of _Millennium's Children_, or five-ish years after the end of the show. 
> 
> Not necessary to read that one first, but it does heavily reference the 'Scrambler,' a time travelling device Daniel and Jack encountered during a rescue mission.

“And then it _exploded_?” The new technician, Steel Hughes, was bug eyed.

Walter Harriman nodded, smug. “Exploded. All over the car.”

Hughes shuddered.

They stood in the control room, waiting for a three am diagnostic to finish.

Hughes yawned.

Walter frowned at him. “How did you get the graveyard shift again?”

“How did you?” the rookie technician shot back. “You’re always here. Come to think of it, you’ve asked for this shift every weekend in the four months since I started here.”

Walter shifted defensively. “I like being here when it’s quiet. What’s your excuse?”

Hughes deflated. “My wife and I are expecting but we don’t want to know the gender. I need all the extra income I can get.”

“Congratulations,” said Walter.

“Thanks. Mind if I…?” He pointed a thumb over his shoulder.

Walter waved him away. “Nah, go ahead. I could use a cup too.”

“Decaf?”

Walter’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t you dare.”

A parting laugh faded down the control steps. Shaking his head, Walter plunked at his station and fiddled a moment with the dials—a maestro eliciting art from his performers. Brow furrowed, he experienced the silence’s colors as one does an exotic bouquet.

Then the view through the window arrested him. He sat motionless, a fond brushstroke of a smile adorning his face. He never tired of looking at the ‘gate. It too had seen much, had witnessed their struggles and their victories.

A soft noise on the stairs behind Walter had him perking up.

He turned and dropped his clipboard. “G…General O’Neill?”

The man wore his infamous leather jacket over an old Air Force T-shirt and red flannel pants. His eyes were bright, too bright. Glazed and pained.

“Step aside, Walter.”

Walter stiffened. “Sir, if I could get you some help, maybe a chair, we can sort out—”

Jack whipped out a black device and Walter crumpled to the floor under hot streams of pain.


	2. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “It’s not true,” said Daniel to his packed office. His words died in the balmy air. “I didn’t mean it. Egypt is my first home. Always has been.”
> 
> His office kept its silence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If any of you lovely people know how to post the first chapter as a prologue, I'd be indebted. I can't figure it out for the life of me!

'I fell asleep down by the stream  
And there I had the strangest dream:  
Down by Brennan's Glenn there grows  
A briar and a rose.'

"The Briar and the Rose" ~ The Cottars

The coffee stains looked like chain mail now against the birch wood desk. Daniel Jackson made another link when his phone rang and he set down his mug. He did a double take at the caller ID. His eyes bulged behind his glasses and he scrambled for the receiver.

“Sam?”

“_Daniel._” Her relived sigh came through like a fragrant breeze in Daniel’s spirit. “_I wasn’t sure what the time difference is between Colorado and Cairo. I could only find your office number…_”

“No, no! Now is a great time. It’s always a great time for you.”

A beat.

“_You’re working late aren’t you?_” Sam’s amused smile was palpable. Suddenly Daniel was breathing easier and he wondered how he’d breathed at all without her.

“Err…technically it’s morning now. Points for that?”

She laughed. “_I thought you took this job to work less. Eighteen months away from the gate and you’re still a work-a-holic._”

Daniel went red but his smile dropped. “Curating one of the world’s most prestigious museums isn’t exactly a holiday.”

“_I know_.”

An uncomfortable silence settled. Daniel shifted and rubbed a sweaty palm along his knee.

“It’s amazing to hear your voice,” he admitted quietly.

“_You too_.” Her voice was just as small. “_We miss you so much here_.”

“How does running Cheyenne Mountain suit you?”

At her sharp inhalation, Daniel straightened. The motion upended a cup of pencils. “Sam? What is it?”

All at once, Daniel realized the implications of a call like this. The urgent timing. Late at night. He’d received enough of these calls in his life. His heart rate quickened.

“Sam? Did something happen to Teal’c on Chulak? Cam—?”

“_No. Heavens no, Daniel. Nobody died. I’m so sorry for…we just don’t know what to make of the footage and I thought you should…I mean, you of all people…it’s practically your right…_”

Daniel bit his lip. “Sam. You’re scaring me. Slow down.”

He wasn’t sure how—the line was utterly silent—but he knew the exact moment Sam teared up and started fighting it. Something hushed, unspeakable, swelled between them.

“Sam?” he asked, soft.

She gave a sharp, wet sniff. “_Have you been feeling nauseous lately?_”

Daniel blinked. “What? What does this have to do with footage?”

“_Headaches?_” she pressed. “_Trouble sleeping?_”

“I always have trouble sleeping,” he tried to joke.

“_No pain or dizziness? Think, Daniel_.”

“No, er.” Daniel’s forehead scrunched while he dutifully thought through Sam’s questions. “No, I don’t think so.”

His eyes widened. “Wait a minute. I woke up with chills and night sweats yesterday. Made it so I couldn’t eat this morning. I thought it was just stress at the time. How did you—?”

“_The link between you and Jack or whatever it is. I thought it might still be active. He used to sense a migraine coming in that head of yours before you did_.”

An edge, new these past two years, advertised her displeasure at Daniel.

But Daniel didn’t hear anything after Jack’s name. His eyes shuttered with an arcane melancholy.

“Jack?”

“_Daniel, he isn’t—_”

“Jack?” Daniel asked again.

There was a heavy thud from the other end. Maybe Sam had set down a coffee pot or her laptop or maybe she’d punched her microscope. Faint PA sounds revealed she was still on base. Still in her office.

_Just like me_.

This hesitation from Daniel’s dear friend was one of the most unnerving things he’d ever experienced. He felt his world tilt at an ungodly angle. Air couldn’t rush into his lungs fast enough.

“Sam, where is he?”

“_We don’t know_.”

“Is he even alive?”

“_We don’t know_.”

“You don’t _know_?”

“_I should make that our motto. Get some T-shirts printed and wear them at Air Force soirees to make the higher ups uncomfortable._”

This time Daniel heard the hurt. Sam’s desperation. Cairo didn’t usually experience earthquakes but it must have been a small one, Daniel thought, because he was the only thing shaking. He took off his glasses and realized he was crying.

“_Daniel?_”

“Sorry,” he rasped.

“_Where was that word two years ago?_” But her voice was tender. Full of love. “_You need to come back_.”

“Why me?” Suddenly Daniel was on his feet. “Why not Teal’c or Landry or—”

“_Because only you can make sense of what I just saw on this footage_,” said Sam. To anyone the words were even, but Daniel heard the quaver. It took an enormous amount to break Colonel—soon to be General—Samantha Carter. Daniel had only seen it once or twice. Now he was hearing it. “_Nobody knows him like you do, at the level you do. This is bigger than what happened two years ago_.”

Daniel gripped the desk. However, he found himself nodding, though a bright flare of stubbornness blinded the flashbacks in his mind’s eye. The shouts. The blood. The _blood_—in his clothes and dirtying his shower for weeks.

“I’ll be home soon.”

“_Thank God_,” said Sam. “_I can pick you up from the airport_.”

“That would be great. Thanks.”

Only when Daniel hung up did he replay the words to himself.

“It’s not true,” said Daniel to his packed office. His words died in the balmy air. “I didn’t mean it. Egypt is my first home. Always has been.”

His office kept its silence.

* * *

Small shocks are sometimes the worst. They have the power to accumulate. One big shock and you’re done for the day. Caput. It’s a weird relief.

Daniel received a small shock when he walked up the stairs and into the SGC briefing room. It was more cluttered than he expected.

His second shock came when he realized that, for the first time in his life, he had just classified people as clutter:

Men in staunch navy uniforms, holding tape recorders and setting up a TV in the corner and making bad coffee and murmuring in low voices like at a funeral. It shook Daniel in a way he couldn’t fathom. All these people. With that one sight, this had turned from a concerning mystery into an emergency.

Hairs on the back of his neck shivered.

A small, warm hand between his shoulders got him moving. He wasn’t doing this alone.

The men stood. Daniel glared at a man sitting in the corner and he too stood. They all seemed to eye Daniel with a cocktail of amazement and wariness.

“General Carter,” said one.

Sam stepped out from behind Daniel. “Gentlemen, at ease. And I’m not a General yet. We had to postpone tomorrow’s ceremony.”

Daniel winced. Sam had put her life, her career, on hold for this. Daniel realized that he probably wouldn’t have been invited to Sam’s ceremony at all if it weren’t for this breach of security.

He took several long breaths until his eyes stopped prickling.

Once everyone was seated at the table and someone handed Daniel a Styrofoam cup of that stupid coffee—_things must be bad…I don’t even want coffee_—Sam cleared her throat. Daniel’s stomach plummeted.

She had a jaw of granite and a wash of respect for her overcame Daniel.

“Sirs, I’ve agreed to let you watch this footage on one condition…” Her eyes flicked ever so briefly to Daniel. “That you hear what Dr. Jackson says with impartiality and sincerity.”

Daniel blinked. He knew this feeling—he was missing something.

Something big. Something pivotal.

And apparently he could solve it.

Sam wasn’t one to mince words. Jack always liked that about her. She didn’t say another word before popping in the footage and turning on the television screen. Grey static replaced the black.

Then a familiar embarkation room, seen through the control room window, replaced the static.

Daniel wanted the static back.

He stiffened in his seat, leaning forward, adjusting his glasses even though he could see just fine.

Jack, in all his flannel and leather glory, bounded into the control room. He electrocuted Walter using a low grade Taser. With a quick, practiced motion, he typed in a set of coordinates. The gate began to spin.

Jack threw the Taser to the floor and raced for the stairs.

After a minute, he reappeared in the gate room, dead center. He stood for one endless, quivering moment in front of the ramp. He wore his leather jacket, sleep bottoms, and…

“Slippers?” asked one major.

Sam’s lips thinned into a long, white line. “We think he bolted straight from his house about thirty minutes away. Clearly he was in a hurry. His truck is currently sitting in its old, usual spot in the parking lot, backed in and everything.”

No one said anything after that.

Jack shouted something—Daniel saw the man’s hands tighten into desperate fists—but his back was to the control room camera.

The usual _whoosh_ meant the gate coordinates had worked. The embarkation room shimmered.

And still Jack didn’t move. He ran a hand down his face and wobbled, unsteady, up the ramp. Then he stopped again, just at the horizon.

Why did Jack hesitate, Daniel wondered, when he’d started with such urgency? When he’d run out of his house still in his pajamas?

Finally, he glanced back once, where Walter slumped in his chair, and grimaced. This time, the angle was perfect to see Jack’s face.

‘Daniel,’ he mouthed.

It was a car battery jolt to the chest. Daniel actually spilled his coffee in a huge splash onto the table. No one paid any notice.

At last, Jack stepped through the event horizon. 

Sam stopped the footage, her shoulders a tense curve. She turned to the table with raised brows.

The silence was deafening, even though the footage had been completely silent. Two star generals around the room were slack jawed.

“What the hell was that?” asked Daniel.

“I was hoping you could tell us,” said Sam. “O’Neill used his old ID card—which he was supposed to have returned when he retired—and knocked three other staff unconscious on his mow to the gate room.

“I’m less concerned about the breach of security than the fact he did this with such precision." Sam ticked off points on her fingers. "He chose the least busy time of day. There was a back-up Taser and knives in his truck. He had all the right codes ready to type in at each level, even though some have changed since he was general. I’m not even going to think about how he got those…”

“Yet he left the house in slippers,” Daniel finished.

“Exactly,” said Sam. “It doesn’t add up even without the deliberate use of your name.”

Daniel had to swallow a thick knot in his throat as his mind replayed the image.

All at once, anger at Sam flared inside him. How dare she make him watch this with an audience? On purpose—knowing he couldn’t censor his reactions in front of these people.

As soon as it came, Daniel deflated. He would have done the same in her position. She was even more desperate than him.

This was wrong. So wrong. The base was trained against invasion plots.

But how do you protect against the one man who knows those security protocols best? Jack had even _designed_ some of those security protocols. 

Daniel’s mind spun and, true to these past two years…since _that day_, a spike of loathing accompanied thoughts of Jack.

The press of an oncoming weeping fit ballooned in Daniel's chest. That was certainly a new feeling. He covered his face with a trembling hand. Nobody paid that any notice either.

“Does Teal’c know?” asked a general sitting at the far end.

Sam nodded. “I’ve called and told him the situation, but he’s currently caring for his granddaughter at the moment. He’ll return here in a few days.”

Her voice was all business, but underneath the table she squeezed Daniel’s knee. It granted Daniel strength to face the room.

“We don’t know where Jack is?” Daniel hated that his voice wavered. “He’s lost? And we’re just sitting here?”

Sam’s lips quirked up on one side. It was a bitter expression. “Oh…we know exactly where he is. Or, where he _was_. A search of the planet with those coordinates revealed a campfire and smooth tracks leading back to the gate, so we know the general and his slippers were there.”

Something about the way Sam’s lips twisted tipped Daniel off.

“Where?” he asked his friend quietly. “Which planet?”

Her face fell. “The one where you found the Scrambler.”

Daniel’s cheeks lost all color.


	3. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Walter,” said Sam in a low voice. “If there’s something you know, you need to tell us. O’Neill’s life is in danger, especially with his acuity compromised.”
> 
> “That’s just it,” Walter whispered. “I’m not sure it was.”

'I never meant to wither,  
I wanted to be tall,  
Like a fool left the river  
And watched my branches fall.'

"Cactus in the Valley" ~ Lights

Coffee. Why did everyone insist on bringing him coffee?

Daniel stared at the steaming Styrofoam cup, then trailed the weathered hand setting it in front of him up to a friendly, weathered face.

Walter tried to smile. It came out as limp as Daniel felt.

“Take a seat, Sergeant Harriman,” said Sam, entering the briefing room.

Walter shuffled into a chair next to Daniel. “What time did you get in?”

“Last night. Or…this morning, I guess.” Daniel removed his glasses to rub at his brow. “I just watched the footage an hour ago.”

Walter sobered. Daniel was suddenly grateful that it was just the three of them in this meeting, no higher ups. To preserve his dignity and Walter’s.

Sam set a tape recorder on the table between them all, right over the coffee stain Daniel had made an hour earlier. She pressed the red button and the tape began to whirl.

“Sergeant, what time did General O’Neill barge into the control room?”

Walter frowned. “The footage was time stamped.”

Sam smiled. “Yes, but I’d like to hear what happened in your words. You may provide specific insights a silent camera reel can’t.”

Walter’s eyes glazed into the past and Daniel’s chest ached just looking at it. The expression went further back than just a few nights ago. Daniel knew that look.

_Memories of days, missions from decades ago. A naïve, long-haired archeologist walking in sync with a once-hardened black ops. A black ops soldier who was going to kill himself before I came along. _

Daniel saw it all in wincing high definition.

“I always ask for the weekend grave yard shift,” said Walter. “I like…well, I like the solitude and the chance to think.”

Sam’s pen readied over her notepad.

Walter shook his head. “Steel Hughes—my trainee—had just gone out to make coffee. There was no sign of an alert or anything wrong with the system, no alarms. We were running a diagnostic, just like we always do. The room was dead quiet. Until I heard…”

“Jack,” said Daniel.

“To be honest, I recognized the footsteps before I even turned around. I’ve never seen the general like that.”

Sam leaned forward. “Like what?”

“He didn’t seem…right.” Walter swallowed. “I mean, besides the Taser pointed at me. His skin was feverish almost, pale yet he sweat a lot. His eyes couldn’t seem to focus on anything.”

“Could he be sick?” Daniel asked Sam. “Maybe something has beaten his immune system?”

Sam threw back one of her patented _looks_.

“Yeah,” said Daniel. “It doesn’t sound plausible to me either.”

Sam waved at Walter to continue.

“I tried to calm O’Neill down, to offer him a chance to think. He wasn’t even dressed! But the last thing I remember was that Taser going off.”

Sam made a note. “There’s definitely a physical component going on here.”

Walter’s eyes suddenly skittered off of Sam and onto the table. Daniel straightened.

“What?” he asked. “What is it?”

Walter bit his lip. He blinked very fast.

“Walter,” said Sam in a low voice. “If there’s something you know, you need to tell us. O’Neill’s life is in danger, especially with his acuity compromised.”

“That’s just it,” Walter whispered. “I’m not sure it was.”

Daniel felt Sam holding her breath. His own fingertips buzzed. It was all jumbled, like the pieces of a murky jigsaw puzzle were out of order where they’d spilled on the floor. Daniel felt them screaming at him, that he should be getting it.

Should know better.

“I…I guess O’Neill didn’t use a very high voltage,” said Walter at last. “I woke up right as he finished dialing, in time to hear him muttering. I pretended to still be unconscious.”

Sam must have sensed something hovering in the air, something fragile and arcane, for she shut the tape off. Its click sounded far, far too loud.

“Muttering what?”

Walter locked eyes with Daniel. “This weird language—Norse, but older.”

“Do you remember the words?” asked Daniel.

“Yeah, actually. It was just one—_hjartamogr_.”

Daniel slowly stood to his feet, took off his fogging glasses, and walked out of the room.

* * *

“Dr. Jackson.” The petite nurse stared at Daniel where they’d passed in the hall. “I didn’t realize you got in already. How are you?”

She said it with too much ‘caring’ emphasis, patronizing, like he was a small child who’d just lost an arm. It was the same thing he got everywhere on base.

People gazed at him with everything from pity to confusion to superiority—he was the man who left Stargate Command for a civilian job. Some thought he was just plain crazy.

_Nothing new there_.

“I’m fine,” said Daniel. “Thank you.”

He retreated before she could ask any more nosy questions about Jack or that fiasco two years ago.

He got those a lot too.

Two days. Forty-eight hours he’d been here and he still felt like he was alone on an abandoned planet.

So he retreated to his usual spot. Not the guest quarters, which reminded him too much of a colleague lost. Not his old office. Not the embarkation room.

He found the base’s infamous “back door” and climbed up to see the stars. There were still the remnants of he and Jack’s last campfire, a victory campfire the night before going through the stargate.

Daniel kicked at the logs with his toe. That felt better.

Nothing was right. Nothing had been right for a long time, since a mission that changed them both forever.

_What am I doing? _Daniel strangled the ends of his hair. He settled cross-legged on the cold grass. _It was only a matter of time. You knew something like this would happen, especially since you left without saying goodbye. _

“Daniel! There you are. I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”

Sam climbed out the grate and sat down beside Daniel on the grass like they’d done it since they were children. Maybe they still were.

Daniel half-glared at her and she grinned. “Not giving me the slip this time.”

Daniel wasn’t sure if she was talking about the past two days or two years ago so he didn’t ask.

Sam didn’t plow right in, as Daniel expected. Knees huddled to their chests, they simply gazed upwards in silence, for almost thirty minutes. The light of dead stars winked at them.

Sam wore her leather jacket and jeans. She was also sporting a new necklace, a stone with their gate’s ‘home’ symbol carved on it.

Daniel smiled. “Teal’c.”

Sam nodded. “He gave it to me when he returned through the ‘gate. About an hour ago.”

More silence. Daniel felt drunk on it. Inebriated by words unsaid. They floated around his head with the centripetal force of dying galaxies, blowing outwards until they form new elements.

“This is too big for me,” said Daniel. The words tumbled from his lips before he could stop them.

“Me too,” said Sam, not looking at him.

“I’m scared.”

“So am I. We’ve faced despotic super humans…”

“But this is personal. The stakes are therefore higher.” Daniel huffed a laugh through his nose. “What if I mess this up like last time?”

Sam had Daniel’s sleeve in a death grip so fast he didn’t even see her move. “Daniel Jackson, you shut it right now. That wasn’t your fault.”

“Me leaving you was.”

“Yes,” said Sam, eyes hard yet earnest. “You left when everything unraveled. But what happened to…to _them_ wasn’t your fault.”

Both looked away, at the burnt ground. Ashes amongst the grass and two year old campfire wood. Daniel felt Sam’s hand still tense on his arm.

He didn’t believe her words and she knew it. Sam, however, didn’t call him out on it.

The hand started rubbing back and forth and at the homely, familiar action, Daniel rested his forehead on his knees.

“I’m preparing forensics teams to go back to the planet, check for evidence,” said Sam. “Colonel Shepherd and Atlantis are also on the lookout in case Jack has hopped galaxies. We’ll find him, Daniel.”

Sam didn’t sound like she believed that at all. Weary in tone, defeated before they’d even begun.

Daniel, however, didn’t call her out on it either.

* * *

The base was quiet, gate travel suspended. The kind of quiet that discouraged eye contact and shortened conversation. It proved contagious for another three days.

Except for one person.

“What’s going on?” Steel asked Walter in a hurried whisper the third morning. “Why is everyone acting like someone died? The away teams go out after lunch. They’ll find O’Neill.”

Walter dropped his clipboard. His face looked like he’d swallowed a broken mirror whole.

“Would you keep your voice down?” he hissed back.

“Everyone’s trying to tiptoe around Jackson and I caught Colonel Carter with red eyes—”

“That’s _Doctor_ Jackson to you,” said Walter, eyes crackling, brow pulled low.

Hughes took a step back. “Sorry, sir.”

Walter picked up his clipboard. His eyes were on energy output data but he wasn’t reading it. A white sheen coated his knuckles.

“Sergeant Harriman…what _did _happen to SG-1 two years ago? No one on base will tell me.”

Walter wet his lips several times. His shoulders deflated away from his ears and his eyes floated down to half mast. He sighed the squeezed sigh of a man who’d witnessed too much, who understood too much.

“That,” said Walter in a quieter tone, “is a very long story. Be glad Daniel and Sam are still around to not tell it.”


	4. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Sam,” said Daniel. “I think it’s time you fired Teal’c.”

'And you know heroes aren't meant to survive,  
So much harder to love when alive  
Walk with the devil in your head  
You would think you were better off dead.'

"Heroes" ~ Mika

“What?” Daniel cork blasted to his feet, fists tight. “No! They can’t do that!”

Sam inhaled a bracing breath. She’d known breaking the news to Daniel would be explosive.

“They can and they did,” she said softly. “They gave me a direct order and that’s that.”

“Sam—this could be our only lead and they’re calling off the investigation before it’s even begun.”

“I know.”

“The IOA are idiots.”

“I know that too.”

The contrast between her carefully neutral figure, hands folded on the desk in front of where she sat, and Daniel’s incensed profile—hiding a childlike desperation—was a nuclear bomb.

“You’re going to send me back to Egypt,” Daniel said, realizing it aloud. His legs wobbled. “Everything will go on as normal, so you won’t let me stay.”

Sam did no such thing.

She stood, rounding her desk in a drunken flurry of motion, and yanked her friend close to her chest. He smelled of sand and leather and salty tears freshly dried on his cheeks.

Daniel vibrated with anger and helplessness, but he hugged her back. His chin propped on her shoulder.

“I won’t let the IOA hurt you,” Sam whispered in Daniel’s ear. “And by God, they’re escorting you off this base over my corpse in a coffin. No one is sending you away, got it?”

Silence.

“Got it?”

Daniel finally stopped shaking, though he breathed hard. Sam’s heart ached for him, a physical pain. She felt a tiny nod against her shoulder.

A sudden mental image came to Sam’s mind, a memory of finding he and Jack on that cabin porch, barbequing in the dead of winter. She remembered Daniel reading a _Hamlet_ soliloquy, light and easy with the promise of it all being over.

“We need to be brave,” she whispered.

Daniel sighed. “My bravery, conquering a fear by going through the stargate two years ago, nearly destroyed us. It _did_ destroy us.”

Sam almost broke then. Instead, she firmed her chin and stepped back.

“The fact we are here proves it didn’t, Daniel.”

She kept a grip on Daniel’s arm. Daniel’s eyes were bruised from sleepless nights. He wore an oversized baseball sweater Sam belatedly recognized as Jack’s, which brought another sting to her eyes.

“Where have the years gone?” She managed a smile.

Daniel mirrored it with a tired one of his own. “Nowhere. There is no time with us.”

Even fractured, missing their fourth to the lawless abyss of the cosmos, exhausted to the nines, traumatized, and aching for hope—Sam and Daniel lit up.

And sixteen years vanished.

They were wide eyed science twins, heads full of knowledge and dreams, standing at the gate ramp for the first time. Sam and Daniel warmed with shared joys and sufferings. Individually, they were lonely with things no other human being understood.

Together—they were each other’s solace.

Sam palmed Daniel’s cheek. “I just…”

“I know.” Daniel’s eyes pooled, but he smiled. “Me too.”

“Samantha Carter.” Thudding boot steps preceded Teal’c’s frantic rush into the head office. His eyes were wide. “Come quickly.”

Daniel and Sam exchanged a look before following their friend at a jog. Down one of the hallways, the chaotic sounds of a fierce argument augmented. One irate voice rose above the others.

Daniel swallowed. “Cam.”

Sam shot him a sympathizing grimace.

The source of the scuffle finally materialized in an isolated interview room.

Cameron sat in his wheelchair, fists railing at three suited men, plastic earpieces and all, huddled on the opposite side of the table. The two bumps where his lower legs should have been did nothing to impede his formidable pitcher’s arm.

By the trays and pens scattered across the floor, not even office supplies were safe from it. 

Though more grey around the ears than Sam remembered, Cam’s upper body had lost none of its bulk. New lines sprouted across his forehead.

“You don’t have security clearance!” the lead suit said. Spit flew from his mouth. “This is a private investigation. As IOA, I have the authority to escort you off this base—”

“I invited him.”

Everyone in the room straightened at Sam’s no-nonsense tone. She looked every bit the general she was soon to become.

The lead man smoothed his suit and locked eyes with Sam.

Sam didn’t back down from the staring match one inch.

“Retired Colonel Mitchell is here as my guest,” she explained. “He requested guest clearance when he heard about what happened to General O’Neill. After all he’s done for this planet, he’s welcome here any time he pleases.”

Daniel, frozen by the door for all of this, finally got his feet moving. He hurried to Cam and reached for a pillow at the man’s back.

“Let me fluff this for you. Honestly, they make these things so flat…”

The moment was a thumbtack under the skin to watch, impossible to ignore, painful in a way you couldn’t talk yourself out of. Sam’s brows drew back.

Cam went from thunderous to gentle in a tenth of a second. He grabbed Daniel’s wrist to still the hurried motions, thumb rubbing a quick circle.

Daniel jumped.

For the first time since entering the room…and for the first time in almost two years…Daniel made eye contact with Cam. Both went motionless.

With a slight sheen, Cam’s gaze darted back and forth across Daniel’s face like he could read eighteen months of missed memories. Daniel’s lips wrung.

Then Cam patted Daniel’s hand.

“It’s alright, Daniel,” he whispered. “I’m alright.”

Sam fought to keep her face impassive. Her heart beat a strange rhythm.

Teal’c must have sensed it, for he nodded at her, then arched an eyebrow at the IOA men. Sam thanked him with a nod. The three men looked bewildered at their perfected, silent communication.

“Gentlemen,” she said, “I just want to make it clear that I don’t agree with your decision to halt the off world component of this investigation. You are here because I was ordered—no more and no less.”

The three men ignored Sam in favor of setting up a tape recorder and complicated cameras.

“My name is Agent Bowman,” said the lead man. “I’ll be conducting the interview today. If you’re ready, Dr. Jackson?”

Daniel let go of Cam to point an angry finger. “What, you want me to just go along with this? After you’ve given up on Jack?”

Sam frowned. “Daniel.”

“N-no! This is wrong. And you all know it!”

Cam wheeled closer. “Don’t fight, short stuff. It ain’t your style.”

Apparently those were the magic words. The rest of those words hung in the air.

_Fighting is Jack’s style_, Sam thought._ Fighting for us. For Daniel_.

Daniel heaved a sigh and sank in the chair. Cam wheeled flush with his right side and Sam sat to Daniel’s left, while Teal’c took up a rear guard.

The IOA agent blustered. “This was to be a private interrogation.”

Sam glared down her nose. “If you so much as attempt to drag me from Dr. Jackson’s side, I will handcuff you to a missile. Understood?”

“Is that a threat, Colonel?”

She didn’t blink. “Yes.”

Bowman blustered some more. His lackeys busied themselves with equipment.

Cam, by contrast, was delighted. “I’ve missed this.”

“This isn’t over,” Sam promised Daniel. “Jack wouldn’t want you to blame yourself.”

“It’s funny,” said Daniel. “I’ve spent so much time trying to avoid him, be independent. I guess…I finally succeeded.”

Sam gripped his arm. “It’s not your fault.”

Daniel gave a morbid laugh. “Sure feels like it is. I have to get him back, Sam.”

Agent Bowman leaned closer. “What was your relationship to General O’Neill, Doctor?”

“Was?” Daniel demanded. “_Was_? He’s not dead.”

“That we know of,” the agent snapped.

“Daniel.” Sam physically inserted her arm between them. “Just answer the question.”

Daniel glanced at inky symbols tattooed on his finger. “Jack…he’s…”

Sam pursed her lips against a film in her eyes.

“My other h—my best friend,” said Daniel.

The agent raised his brows in surprise. Another stopped writing with a loud _scratch_.

“It wasn’t like that,” Daniel amended. “We’re close friends and we…we both just…really didn’t want to go on living when we found each other. We gave that hope back to each other.”

Silence, reverent, dared any of the men to speak. They didn’t.

Sam squeezed Daniel’s shoulder.

“Have you been in contact with General O’Neill?”

Daniel scowled at Bowman’s question. “No. I haven’t spoken to Jack in eighteen months.”

“No phone calls? No letters? Emails?”

Daniel shook his head.

Bowman quickly glanced up from his notepad. “Been feeling sick lately?”

A physical jolt ran through Daniel.

Teal’c leaned between them. “How do you know about that?”

“About what?” But Bowman’s eyes wouldn’t settle on them, furtive and weaseling.

“If I may,” said Sam, “I’d like to continue this investigation from our end. Check for foul play.”

The men were already closing their brief cases. Sam hadn’t even seen them pack up.

“Negative,” said Bowman. “Not authorized.”

“What?” Cam’s brow roiled under the same storm. “The IOA has shut us down from both ends?”

The agent hesitated. “Technically, yes. We’re taking over the investigation.”

“Why?” asked Daniel, imploring now. “What is the IOA hiding?”

The agent ceased his calculated movements in favor of examining Daniel. For the first time since entering the room, Sam saw confusion in Bowman’s eyes. He seemed to be beholding something for which he had no answer.

Teal’c must have sensed it too, for he tensed. Sam felt it without even looking at him.

“Dr. Jackson,” said the agent, “you are an anomaly. One that, no matter how much human predictability theory would attempt to explain, would fail every time.”

A slew of emotions flitted across Daniel’s face. He leaned back in his chair. Blinking, opening his mouth for questions that never made it to his tongue.

“Wait.” Sam’s brain finally caught up. “_Technically_, yes? What does that mean?”

Bowman glanced at his compatriots, filing out into the hallway, and cleared his throat once they were alone.

“My orders are to ground all SG teams from investigating General O’Neill’s disappearance.”

The four stared blankly at him.

“SG _teams_.”

And he left the room.

“That was brief,” said Sam.

“You and Teal’c are still employed by the SGC,” Cam argued. “Hell, even I’m on their payroll for disability.”

Sam grinned. She set one elbow on the back of her chair to catch Daniel’s eye. “But as curator of Cairo’s foremost museum—_you_ are not.”

Daniel took off his glasses. He tapped them against his palm. Lips pursed, eyes darting, he lowered his head.

When he raised it, Sam almost wept:

Fire. She saw absolute fire in his eyes, an inferno burn of white heat, love, and determination. Her heart swelled in triumph.

With that fire, they could do anything.

“Sam,” said Daniel. “I think it’s time you fired Teal’c.”

* * *

Walter prided himself on the fact that even though he rarely went out in the field—not that he needed to; the base saw plenty of action on its own—he maintained reflex and combat acuity through consistent training.

At least he _thought_ he did.

Until a hand sprang out of a supply closet and nearly sent him to an early grave. Walter managed to bite back the warbled shriek on his tongue. 

Barely.

The hand latched onto Walter’s shirt front and yanked him inside. It was dark, illuminated only by a sliver of light where the door had been left ajar.

It sheened off twin circles, like winking moons, in the dim sky of the closet.

Walter’s squint became surprised, wide eyes. “Dr. Jackson?”

The linguist relinquished Walter’s uniform in favour of taking off his glasses. He twisted them in sweating fingers. Walter guessed this last detail when he noticed Daniel’s ragged breathing.

“Dr. Jackson?”

“Sorry for scaring you.”

Walter drew back. “I…apology accepted. Are you alright?”

“No. No, I don’t…I mean…”

Walter flashed back to this very room six years ago. And then fifteen years ago, Daniel holding a gun.

Worry spiked in his chest. He wished he could see Daniel’s eyes, check his pulse, but knew better. Unwanted touch fared like hot oil where Daniel Jackson was concerned.

“What is it with you and supply closets?” he asked instead.

Daniel laughed. Relieved, Walter chuckled too. 

“Walter, I…I need your help.”

Walter nodded. “I heard about the stop to team investigations. I’m so sorry. You ever need a listening ear, a drink on the house, I’m your guy.”

“No.” Daniel’s shoes scuffed back and forth. Pacing. Hoping. Praying. “You don’t understand. They’re not even going to the planet to search for clues.”

“I can see why,” said Walter. “Hard as it is, Colonel Carter wants to investigate this secretly. The gate being activated is kind of a dead giveaway for the IOA. All teams—and gate travel—are suspended, remember?”

“She’s not even willing to take the risk!”

Walter bit his lip. “Should we?”

Visibility was less than zero, inky thick, but Walter would swear on a stack of technician manuals to the heart rending gaze that landed on him in that moment. It stole Walter’s breath.

His skin felt slimy. _Everything_ felt slimy.

“He did,” Daniel whispered.

Walter sighed. “Jack did risk everything. The real question is why.”

“Surveillance tapes aren’t going to answer that. Sam will get to the bottom of ‘how,’ I have no doubt. But all the answers won’t bring Jack home.”

Walter’s heart skipped a beat. 

So did Daniel’s apparently, for he gasped.

“This place hasn’t felt like home in a long time,” said Walter.

“Having Jack back will do it.”

“Having you _both_ here is the only thing that can. Take it from someone who lived through your absences.”

Daniel gripped Walter’s arm. “I’m not enough.”

“Darn right you’re not. Neither is General O’Neill. Neither are any of us on our own. That’s the point. Unity is what the IOA doesn’t understand.”

“So you’ll help?”

Walter spluttered. “I never said that.”

“I’m not technically employed by the SGC anymore.”

“All the more reason to shut down whatever illegal plot you’re cooking.”

The hand on Walter’s forearm squeezed. A faint, dire gesture. 

“He never gave up on me, Walter, all those times. Much as I resent him, I intend to do the same. I won’t say any more, but when the time comes…press it.”

Of all the scenarios and clandestine plans Walter braced himself for, this wild statement had never crossed his mind. It didn’t even compute. Made no sense.

His mouth worked. “What?”

“Just press it,” said Daniel again, in that tone reserved for lecture students and Jack on slow days.

Walter only stirred from his confusion when the warm patch on his arm cooled. He was alone. Daniel and his sweaty grip were gone.

And didn’t that just sum up the last two years at the SGC?

Walter swallowed. Hard. 


	5. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam’s gun snapped up. 
> 
> It was the first and last time she ever aimed a weapon between Daniel’s eyes. Fresh light bathed the room, enough for Daniel to see her arms shaking.

'Slow regrets  
That live in the dark  
And I wrote them all down  
But I know them by heart.'

"Looking for You Again" ~ Matthew Perryman Jones

“Hjartamogr.”

Daniel startled at the word. He spun off the edge of his guest quarters bed and to his feet. Teal’c stood in the doorway, holding a dusty tome, which looked to be dog-eared and sticky-noted to saturation.

“Hjartamogr,” said Teal’c again. Softly, gently. The Norse word sounded queer coming from the burly Jaffa’s mouth.

Daniel slid on his glasses and shoved a bag under the bed with his toe in one smooth motion.

“What about it?” he asked Teal’c.

The dark eyes crinkled when Teal’c smiled. He set the Old Norse compendium down on the bed. “I at last discovered its meaning. It has been a week since O’Neill disappeared, yet it took me this long to understand.”

Lofty rhythms stampeded through Daniel’s heart. They raced across his chest. Down his shaking, clammy palms.

“There’s nothing to understand,” said Daniel, breathless even though he’d been sitting down.

“On the contrary, Daniel Jackson.” Teal’c drew close. Close enough for Daniel to feel the heat of Teal’c’s shoulder near his chin. “I am only grieved that it has taken me over fifteen years to truly comprehend what has been in front of us all along.”

The awful weight of that statement threatened to buckle Daniel. He licked his lips, blinking at machine gun speed.

Teal’c stood patiently, hands hovering as if to clap his friend’s shoulders.

“I don’t need Jack,” Daniel blurted suddenly.

“It is not a question of need,” said Teal’c.

“Then what?” Daniel’s chest worked. “What is wrong with me? I’m orphaned, Teal’c. Always been on my own.”

A zap of something compassionate ignited in Teal’c’s gaze and struck Daniel with the force of Jack’s Taser.

Teal’c’s hands finally made it to Daniel. But they settled on his cheeks instead. Daniel could no more move than pick up the Sphinx in one hand.

“This is a lie, Daniel Jackson,” Teal’c whispered. “And the very thing that troubles you.”

His thumbs swished under Daniel’s eyes. They came away wet and Daniel finally realized he’d shed scared tears. The tender gesture so astonished him that more fell. Teal’c wiped these away too.

“We’ll be home again…right?” Daniel didn’t mean for the words to come out so brittle. His nostrils flared. “This won’t be the end?”

Teal’c nodded. “Indeed.”

He took the book, bowed, and left the room with a smile. Daniel wiped his cheeks with the back of his sweater sleeve. He checked his watch.

_One hour. Sam and Teal’c are about to go into a meeting. _

A one hour window.

Daniel thought of the thumbs and that smile and his shoulders squared. He wasn’t just doing it for Jack.

He was doing it for them. Their weird quartet. The base.

It was easier to tell himself that.

The canvas backpack he’d filched from the supply closet was small. Just enough for brushes and some basic provisions, a blanket, several changes of clothes.

Currency from various planets.

Daniel slung it over both shoulders and stuck his hands in his pockets, sauntering down the hall in an attempt to look casual. More hellos greeted him. He spotted one cook who’d given him her number—he’d lost it already.

For three o’clock on a Friday afternoon, the control room was dismally quiet. Only three workers sat at their stations: Hughes and two other, newer technicians Daniel didn’t know. No sign of Walter.

Daniel’s throat worked.

_Come on, do it—before you lose your nerve. _

He bounded up the steps. “Didn’t you hear?”

The technicians turned, a shade more confused and frazzled than Daniel’s himself felt.

His eyes bugged in exaggerated horror. “You guys are late!”

“Late?” Hughes frowned. “For what?”

“The meeting! Duh! You don’t want to be late or Colonel Carter will roast you alive, trust me.”

The three technicians eyed each other and their posture straightened at Sam’s name. Daniel’s heart thundered now.

_That’s it. Just leave._

Daniel didn’t care about footage later. He just needed it to work _now_.

“Your loss,” said Daniel. He shrugged. “Good luck finding civilian jobs.”

That cinched it.

The three technicians bolted out of their seats.

“Upstairs,” said Daniel when they looked lost. “In Carter’s office. They need technician reports on the gate last Saturday and Siler was supposed to give you the memo. He probably forgot.”

Hughes shook Daniel’s hand on the way by. “Thanks, man. I owe you.”

“Don’t mention it.”

_Please. Don’t mention it._

They trundled away, fumbling for read outs on clipboards, and then it was just Daniel and the ‘gate. Daniel and ancient stardust.

Nothing new there either. 

It occurred to him with a strange jolt that this was the first time he’d ever been alone with the thing since he first studied it nearly two decades ago. 

Daniel breathed out with a smile. He could still taste cold coffee on his lips. Still hear Jack clip-cloppy dress shoes. Still smell the haze of cigarette smoke. 

Buttons on the control board hummed and vibrations tickled Daniel’s fingers where they rested on the keyboard.

The hum sang under his shoes, too. Up his legs and over the walls.

Daniel’s mouth dropped open. It wasn’t the fancy equipment creating a discrete buzz:

_It’s the ‘gate itself._

No wonder Walter loved it up here.

_Move,_ Daniel told himself. _This is the opportune moment_.

But something arcane, primal, compelled him to stop for a reverent moment. Just like Jack had.

Daniel’s very skin quivered in time with the hum that had been singing to them all along, a song few dared listen to except steadfast technicians and resurrected archaeologists. The ‘gate was ready for her swan song.

Daniel punched in the first symbol. 

The ‘gate lit up, a long lost friend. And Daniel’s shaking stopped. His pounding heart quieted. Like he’d been living blind on base until this moment, until he finally stepped into the sunlight. 

He typed in another cartouche. 

And another. And another.

Alarms blared but Daniel ignored them. 

The ring spun and winked at Daniel. Five symbols down.

Daniel had never done this himself on Earth, but he’d watched Sam and Walter do it countless times. He had the image of their key strokes memorized. 

_This won’t be like last time_, Daniel coached himself. He tried pressing the panel for opening the iris but, as expected, it didn’t light up for his hand. _No one is going to die. Not if I have anything to say about it_.

KER-WHAM! 

Daniel slammed the last symbol. Veins popped in his forehead but his eyes were steel. The last crystal lit up like a slot machine on millions. 

Daniel bolted down the stairs and through the open embarkation room door. Purpose lent him wings.

_I’m coming, Jack._

His foot hit the ramp—

“_Daniel_!”

The ‘gate _whooshed_ to victory.

Daniel, however, barely heard it over the sound of Sam’s scalding shriek, a tone he’d never heard before. He whipped around.

Sam had opened the embarkation room door and now stood at the bottom of the ramp. Her eyes didn’t waver from Daniel’s face. 

Daniel shook his head. He spoke to Walter, now at his station, but his gaze locked on Sam’s. “Open the iris, Walter.”

The technician froze, hand hovering over the computer.

“Harriman,” barked Sam. “Don’t you dare.”

“Walter! This is our only chance and you know it!”

Sam’s jaw hardened. Airmen with rifles filed in behind her.

Her hand twitched and fell away. “Daniel, don’t make me do this.”

“I’ll see you soon, Sam.”

“Sergeant. Do not open the iris. That is a direct order.”

“You’re the porter,” Daniel called to Walter. “The last true gatekeeper. Fulfill that legacy.”

Daniel’s eyes swam with apology, with broken dreams he and Sam had carried for each other so long neither knew whose belonged to whom anymore.

Sam’s profile was granite but her mouth twisted and wrung. Thinned and then spread.

Daniel finally saw what she had in her hand, saw the gun tucked behind her hip. 

Protocol, Daniel remembered now. He was a rogue, a radical in the IOA’s equation. Sam was going to be a general and thus shooting Daniel was textbook. 

“Daniel…”

“Open it, Walter—”

“Daniel!”

“—Please.”

At that word, Sam closed her eyes.

Walter was alabaster, hand hesitating in the air. The dry melody of the gate’s song swelled, filling Daniel’s lungs. Walter’s head shot up and Daniel knew he felt it too.

For a heartbeat, time stopped. 

The microphone was close enough to the technician’s station that Daniel heard Walter’s soft, “I’m sorry, Colonel.”

His hand pressed the panel. 

Sam’s gun snapped up. 

And the iris fanned open, a beautiful _shring _of metal and loyalty. 

It was the first and last time she ever aimed a weapon between Daniel’s eyes. Fresh light bathed the room, enough for Daniel to see her arms shaking.

Two heartbeats passed.

Five heartbeats.

Sam’s finger twitched and everyone sucked in a breath. Daniel felt a ripple of her agony inside his own chest. He hadn’t been the only one affected by that disastrous mission two years ago. Trauma had stripped them all. 

_This won’t be like last time_. He met her eyes. _I promise this won’t be like last time_.

“Don’t give up hope yet,” he breathed.

There was no way Sam could have heard him. Her lip-reading skills weren’t good enough to account for it. 

Whatever it was, whatever spell fused them in that moment, she got it. Her arms lowered, just a fraction—

Daniel spun and dove headfirst through the horizon. He landed amidst dusty, towering city ruins, a place he and Jack had hidden from the world for over a thousand years. 

Daniel fell to his knees and let out a sob.

* * *

“Colonel?”

Sam had come up the stairs after Daniel left. Her eyes swam.

She inhaled a shuddering breath. “At ease, Harriman.”

The other airmen got the message. Rifles lowered and shaky grimaces were exchanged. A gawping crowd dispersed, leaving Sam and Walter alone.

Behind her, Sam felt the hovering presence of Teal’c out in the hall.

_He’s gone. Daniel left us…again. _Sam had never been so shaken, not even after carrying Mitchell through the ‘gate, screaming and missing his legs. This wasn’t the plan.

“For what it’s worth,” said Walter, voice small. “He’s on your side.”

“I know.”

“He dialed the coordinates for—”

Sam sighed. “I know. And don’t feel bad. I would’ve done the same in your shoes, so no disciplinary measures.”

Both watched the horizon dissipate in a feathered wisp of indigo flight. The base felt colder. 

“I was supposed to shoot him. I…I should have shot Daniel,” Sam murmured. “Any good base leader would have done it.”

“To hell with protocol.”

Walter’s low vehemence made Sam turn and stare at him. 

He blushed at her owlish surprise but kept his chin up. “No historical account will ever understand this.”

Sam couldn’t help herself. “Understand what? That things have gotten so twisted protocol states I should have shot my best friend?”

Walter shook his head. “Hundreds of years from now, men will comb through mission files and footage and try to understand this program. How this place lasted so long. How it ran with such…_rightness_. They will never grasp that we rest on the wordless fluency of team members, on the hope of dead men returned to us, on the need for unerring loyalty amidst hell.”

Now Walter stared at _her_ and it began to dawn. 

“Home,” said Sam.

Walter nodded. “Home.”

They did not smile, did not share a conspirator’s look. But Sam met Walter’s eyes and both saw the years of dirt and blood on each other’s bodies. 

“They will scour every last scrap of evidence, but all they will see are grey walls and military combat training.” Walter’s voice was a breath. Dying even as it birthed into the charged air between them. “They will never see the picture inside the frame. They see a planetary exploration base.”

“We see family,” Sam finished. 

Because home wasn’t this place. It was the people who filled it.

And it felt wrong because the government had forced them apart, had forced them on missions that shattered every last ounce of security in each other. 

Sam’s lips unfolded. “Teal’c?”

The Jaffa was up the stairs in record time. “Colonel Carter?”

His arms were tense and sweat puffed on his brow. He had no weapon in his hands. Sam looked at her gun and bit down an acrid, blistering knot.

She put the automatic on the desk and shoved it away from herself. 

“Your unemployment papers just went through,” she said. “Ergo, _as a friend_, I wondered if you wanted to take a little trip with me. I’m clocking out for the day anyway.”

Teal’c hesitated. But his eyes were alight. “Where are we going?”

Sam glanced at Walter. She exhaled and it felt like her first real breath in years. 

She smiled. “We’re going to help Daniel.”


	6. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The sight of Teal’c, inky fedora not quite covering a sliver of gold tattoo and holding a two-thirds empty orange prescription bottle, turned out to be the straw that broke Sam’s temporary calm.
> 
> “What?” she barked. And then she swore. A four syllable hybrid that would have made Jack smile.

'Oily marks appear on walls  
Where pleasure moments hung before.  
The takeover, the sweeping insensitivity of this still life.'

"Hide and Seek" ~ Imogen Heap 

It had been a metropolis once. Nearly as modern as Earth’s beloved Manhattan, arched towers yawned from the detritus now engulfing the city. 

Daniel, as he and Jack had done the first time without knowing why, took off his shoes. He carried them and his socks in one hand and Sam’s makeup brush in the other.

He walked a solid hour through sandy streets. At last he came to the outskirts of the city.

Here, modernity ended and a selfish stretch of desert took its place.

Sure enough, beyond the dunes, in the belly button of a stony culvert, the ashes of a fire glared back at Daniel. He trotted down the sand to crouch near the fire and MRE wrappers. Just as the MALP had shown.

Smooth, Jack-sized slipper tracks led back up the hill and into the abandoned city.

Next to the fire were the bronzy remains of the Scrambler. It had taken a hammer from their time in pre-_Beowulf_ Scandinavia _and_ an alien laser to destroy it.

An ancient object and a futuristic one.

Daniel shuddered.

He headed back for the city. He and Jack had been blessed with the terrible privilege of visiting this planet in its past, when it was thriving. A past older even than the Ancients.

And only for one day.

The language had eluded them, something so antediluvian even Daniel had no reference for it. It was more like…singing…than talking. The civilization had already been dying from their own chrono-exploration and greed.

It had taken Daniel and Jack another two hundred years of time hopping to get home. 

Daniel forced himself back to the city square—to the present—and its stargate.

The DHD was the only thing not sand covered, thanks to Jack’s _Shawshank_ act. 

Daniel knelt beside the DHD. Sam’s fine-whiskered brush cleared away any excess sand. Abruptly, Daniel felt normal again. Digging in the sand. Seeking knowledge.

He took off his sunglasses to spread a fine powder over the DHD symbols. He thanked whoever was listening that there was no wind to blow it away.

The sun was already beginning to set. It was just enough to see seven lined whorls—

“Yes!” Daniel actually whooped. “_Yes_!”

Jack’s fingerprints smiled back in all their gritty glory.

Daniel pounded the sandstone he was so happy. “We have a chance! You hear that, Jack? Just hang on!”

The euphoria faded, however.

Daniel stared at the seven symbols and groaned.

_No way am I asking for Sam’s help now_. Seven symbols. An infinite number of variations, of ‘gates Jack could have gone to. Daniel could practically hear Sam’s math lecture in his head. 

Daniel frowned at the symbols in some subconscious hope they’d whisper up their secrets. He hadn’t committed a criminal act that would render him a global threat in every government’s eyes just to go back in defeat. 

_Wait a minute…_

Daniel’s eyes widened. He double checked the prints again.

_I know these coordinates._

One didn’t forget the place they fell from the sky. With an almighty huff of disbelief, Daniel sat back on his heels. He shook his head.

“Vis Uban. Jack went to Vis Uban.”

* * *

One eyebrow arched towards a fedora perched on the glossy forehead and dark eyes stared down an equally tall, dark macchiato. Teal’c’s fingers eclipsed the Starbucks cup but for a spiky top of green hair.

He seemed to be interrogating a particularly difficult suspect—without success.

He took the plastic cover off, sniffed it, made a face, and then quickly tried to school his expression into something neutral.

If Sam hadn’t been so focused on her rear view mirror, she would have laughed.

Teal’c snapped the cover back on. “I will never understand your affinity for drinking dirt. Daniel Jackson is the worst culprit of all.”

This time Sam lost it. Her snickers filled the SUV. “It’s coffee, Teal’c. Well, espresso, actually.”

He glanced at her. “Why, General Carter, did we stop for thirty minutes at a Starbucks?”

“Because.” Sam adjusted her mirror. Only blank, sun moistened pavement met her eyes. Her grip loosened around the wheel. “This had to look like a normal afternoon off. You, me. Coffee. We were being followed and now we’re not, so I’d say it worked. And for the thousandth time, I’m still Colonel Carter. Not general.”

Teal’c’s cheeks lifted in the barest hint of a grin. “You are a general to me, a title you have deserved for quite some time.”

“Whatever you say, Teal’c.” But Sam was grinning too.

The drive took another fifteen minutes, owing to Sam’s random circling of the nearby suburbs. Just in case.

“How’s life as a grandfather treating you? She sounds beautiful. Laeyana. Even her name is pretty.”

At this, the Jaffa positively beamed. “It is most satisfying to hold her in my arms.”

Sam was surprised to feel tears sting her eyes.

“I can’t wait to meet her,” Sam managed.

Teal’c inclined his head. “I intend to bring Laeyana here once the travel ban has been lifted. Though an infant, she has grown teeth—and an inner fire—at a startling rate.”

Sam frowned. Then Teal’c held up his left hand.

Along the index finger was a half-circle set of cuts, tiny but painful looking. Sam laughed again. A low rumble signaled Teal’c’s amusement too.

The familiar russet house and its black shingled roof appeared around a copse of trees, a coy distance from the other houses.

Sam pulled into the drive and shut off the engine, but neither moved. She ran a hand down her face and wondered when she’d started to feel like an orphan.

“Coffee?” offered Teal’c, holding out the Starbucks cup.

Sam huffed around a smile. “Thanks.”

She swigged it back while they got out of the car. Both walked at a sedate pace, fake chatter on their lips even when they approached the door. Sam made a show of knocking.

“Sir? You home?”

Shrugging at Teal’c, she took out Daniel’s copy of the house key.

“Took me months to find this,” said Sam. “Turns out he’d hidden it in a copy of _Hieroglyphic Cryptology_. A new archaeologist found it. Go figure.”

This sobered Teal’c for some reason. His face dropped and Sam felt like she was back in that closet five years ago, Walter saddened by something she hadn’t understood.

However, she caught Teal’c’s mood upon opening Jack’s door and stepping into the foyer.

Both froze.

Last time Sam had been here, fond pictures of the team spanned every surface. There’d been little mementos, an arrowhead here or a jar there, all things Jack had made fun of Daniel for in the moment and then snuck back to keep later. It had begun to smell much like Daniel’s old office.

After two years living at the cabin, they’d collected lots of trinkets. Photo albums from their year of travel.

News clippings about how the FBI and Air Force couldn’t find them smugly hung on the fridge.

Now there was…nothing.

Jack had gone from living like a badgery, affectionate older brother to a hermit.

“Where are all the photos?” Sam’s hand swiped over the smooth wall. “Why…why did he get rid of everything?”

Teal’c didn’t voice what they already knew. Everyone remembered the arguments, that time Daniel threw a lamp at Jack. How both men came to loathe the sight of each other. Daniel leaving on a plane with a job offer and barely a glance in Jack’s direction.

“General Carter?”

Sam realized she trembled faintly. “I’m good. I’m…just…not so great memories.”

Teal’c’s eyes clouded with images of that disastrous mission. He took the cup from Sam’s hands and mopped up espresso on the floor.

Sam washed her hands without feeling. She didn’t even feel the stained sleeves of her coat.

The coffee had burned the knobby joint on her thumb and she stared at it, eyes blank, water twirling over it in a swan song. Dying. Icy.

“Samantha Carter.”

“Sorry.” Sam wiped her hands on a towel. “I’m good to go.”

“We must set things right,” said Teal’c.

Sam’s head bobbed in a curt nod. “Right. I’ll check the bedrooms. You take the living room and kitchen.”

Teal’c gave her shoulder a quick squeeze and removed two pairs of white latex gloves from his pocket. Both snapped them on with a weighted look at each other.

_The NID and IOA can’t know we were here. Not for this. _

The bungalow grew colder the farther through it Sam walked. She was glad she’d kept her jacket on.

The guest suite was empty and the bathroom yielded nothing but a photo of Charlie hidden behind the sink, which Sam reverently put back.

On the threshold of Jack’s bedroom, she bit her lip.

“This doesn’t feel right,” Sam muttered.

None of it was right.

Sighing, she crept inside and went for the closet. Judging by the blanket and pillow in the living room, not to mention the almost sterile-made bed, Jack didn’t sleep much here anyway.

On closer inspection, Sam’s brow knit. Something seemed…_smelled_ familiar.

Her hands sifted through the hangers, faster now. She was a bloodhound, tracing minute wafts of a scent so old she couldn’t place it.

Luckily, she didn’t have to:

At the very back, tucked behind the general’s dress blues, was a collection of strange garments. Long and in various shades of sun faded emeralds and tans, Sam had never seen anything like them.

Her hands dropped. A choked sound crawled out of her throat.

_Daniel’s. These are Daniel’s Abydos robes_. In one fold were looped a pair of Daniel’s broken glasses.

Did Daniel even know Jack had these?

Before Sam could even begin to wrap her mind around this, reeling, Teal’c’s voice made her jump.

“General Carter! You must see this.”

“You too!” she called, jogging down the hallway. “You won’t believe what I just—”

The sight of Teal’c, inky fedora not quite covering a sliver of gold tattoo and holding a two-thirds empty orange prescription bottle, turned out to be the straw that broke Sam’s temporary calm.

“What?” she barked. And then she swore. A four syllable hybrid that would have made Jack smile.

“Is this not what we were looking for?” asked Teal’c.

“Yeah…I mean, _no_.” She breathed hard. Hard enough to lift the bangs off her forehead. “I pictured some scum bag jabbing him with a syringe in a dark alley the night before all this happened. Cold War style. Not—” Sam snatched the bottle from Teal’c’s fingers. Her eyes went huge. “—_seventy five_ tablets of some drug I’ve never heard of!”

Teal’c’s eyes were a fire.

Sam’s heart pounded. “We’ve gotta move, Teal’c. Come on!”

He followed her at once. Sam had the SUV in reverse before he’d even closed his door.

And Sam was afraid. Terribly afraid.

“General Carter?”

“We have to get these to Doctor Lam. Now.”

Teal’c shook the bottle. “What does this mean?”

Sam roared onto the freeway. Her hands were clammy on the stick. When she at last replied, her voice was low and tight with urgency.

“It means this was planned. Planned long before we ever imagined.”


	7. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “My dear child, even stargates, as you call them, need a destination—need a companion. It only makes sense that something like the orb has a partner too. Offspring of the stars are never alone.”

'You've got a warm heart,  
you've got a beautiful brain.  
But it's disintegrating,  
from all the medicine.'

"Medicine" ~ Daughter

“Psychotropic. That’s it!”

“Hmwha?” Sam’s head jerked off her folded arms. “Sorry…”

Carolyn Lam smiled and ignored Cam’s chuckles. “It’s alright, Colonel. These tests have taken hours.”

Sam glanced around from where she’d fallen asleep on the other side of Lam’s microscope. The clock read just after one am.

Cam had parked his chair next to her, Sudoku book in his lap with different, spidery style handwriting, evidence he’d stolen it from Daniel’s suitcase. He winked when Sam’s bleary gaze landed on him.

Teal’c meditated in the corner.

Sam’s lips twitched. “Electric candles? Really?”

Lam followed Sam’s eyes and scowled. “No fire in my lab. He knows the rules.”

Teal’c opened his eyes and inclined his head.

Carolyn’s face softened. “Maybe next time, though.”

“What a Gandhi,” Cam muttered, eyes twinkling and affectionate on Teal’c. “You can make a drowning cat love you.”

“I have learned from the best,” said Teal’c.

Sam and Cameron stiffened. 

_Daniel._ Sam fingered the ‘A’ shaped symbol pendant around her neck. _Just give us some time, Daniel. _This was becoming a mission to get him back as much as the general.

“Psychotropics?” she asked aloud instead, refocusing everyone on the task at hand. They huddled around the table. Sam fingered the prescription bottle. “Is that what these are?”

Carolyn’s lips pressed. “Yes and no.”

The other three turned startled eyes on her.

She held up a toxicology read out. “What I mean is that I’ve never seen anything like it. Under certain conditions, though, it acts like a psychotropic. A very, very…_very_ strong psychotropic. Only these seem to accelerate natural bpm rather than sedate. And this bottle is almost empty. They’ve been building up in O’Neill’s system for quite some time.”

“That would explain the pajama-Taser combo,” said Cam.

“No.” Sam frowned. “It doesn’t. Even if General O’Neill’s mind is being messed with, it wouldn’t explain _why_ he targeted the base.”

“Are you kidding?” Cam flung out an arm to gesture to the room, the base. “His whole life was here until two years ago! I don’t know where else he _could_ go.”

“Then why come here to harm?” Sam pressed. “Why did he have a clear plan for a surgical attack like this? Psychotropics can’t account for such a strong motivation. A one-track motivation at that. If anything, they tend to muddle decision making.”

Cam shrugged. “Someone planted the attack in his head.”

“Who?” asked Sam. “We searched that house and there was no evidence the lock had been tampered with. Nothing missing. He doesn’t have any friends who know about the program other than us.”

They all stared at each other, faces grim. Sam could save a whole planet from black holes and dimensional shifts but she was lost in the face of this mystery.

“I wish I could tie up, in a neat little ribbon, what this is.” Carolyn’s eyes swam with an apology. “But these pills are a combination of substances I’ve only just begun to break down into their molecular components. Some elements are, well, alien. For lack of a better word.”

“No offense, big guy.” Cam tapped Teal’c on the stomach with the back of his hand.

“None taken,” said the Jaffa, tone wry.

“Why would the general willingly ingest a foreign substance?” Sam paced to the door and back. “He was hesitant to take a Tylenol when we were on active duty, let alone prescription meds.”

Carolyn’s eyes circled the room and she grinned.

“What?” asked Cam. “Don’t leave a guy in suspense.”

“I don’t need to know one iota of what is in this bottle,” said Carolyn. “I got your next lead without it.”

Even Teal’c looked confused. Confused and hopeful. Just like at the house, Sam found his mood a contagion, pumping through her with the grace of a beautiful virus.

She grinned too. “Oh, Carolyn. You’re good.”

“Thank you,” said the doctor.

“I don’t know why I didn’t notice it before, honestly.”

“Must be all the coffee. A crash like that isn’t good for you.”

“Come on!” Cam griped, but he looked years younger with the humour of it all. “What are us dunderheads missing? Uh, no offense Teal’c.”

“…Some taken.”

“The bottle’s label,” said Carolyn, putting the man out of his misery. “It’s got a psychiatrist’s name on it. The man who prescribed it.”

Stunned silence fell over them. That it could be so simple.

“Well,” said Cam. “He’s fishy if he’s got some alien drug the medical community has never even heard of.”

Sam patted her friend’s shoulder. “That’s why I’m putting my best man on the case.”

Cam groaned, but his face lit up like Christmas came early.

* * *

Footsteps approached from outside the tent and shadows morphed and shrank under a torch’s light. Daniel glanced up.

A wizened face appeared in the tent flap. The browned hand held his torch just out of reach of the nylon.

Daniel sighed. “Hello again, Shamda.”

The village elder’s eyes fussed over Daniel like a wayward child. “I’m sorry you could not find what you are looking for in our Vis Uban.”

Daniel shrugged one shoulder, picking at his—at _Jack’s_—sweater cuffs. “I’ll head out in the morning to the coordinates you gave him.”

“We cared for you once, as Arrom, until your memories returned,” said Shamda. The lines around his eyes were a tree’s rings. Sacred and ancient. “This is something different. This is an _inability_ to forget anguished memories. My heart grieves with yours.”

“I…I’m not grieving,” said Daniel. He adjusted his glasses. “I’m doing this because someone has to. This man, he used to be my friend. But he can’t seem to last a week without getting into trouble.”

“It’s funny,” said Shamda softly. “He expressed almost the same thing about you.”

Daniel looked away.

Shamda’s face suddenly paled. “_Used_ to be your friend?”

“It’s a long story,” said Daniel, quiet and small.

“I have much time.” Shamda matched the tone.

“I don’t, Shamda. Neither does Jack. Please, you must remember more. Tell me again what happened.”

Shamda tapped at his forehead. “O’Neill stumbled through the ring with a most pained expression. We tried to help him but he was determined. He needed something from us. A circle within a circle. An…orb…I think he said.”

Daniel shuffled out of his sleeping back and into Vis Uban’s balmy night so fast his head spun. He gripped Shamda’s biceps.

His eyes flared with something aghast and childishly balking. “A Scrambler, Shamda? Did he call it a Scrambler?”

“Yes,” Shamda whispered. “That’s exactly what he called it.”

“Ooohhh…”

“Daniel!”

It was Shamda’s turn to grip Daniel when his knees gave out. A prickly sweat fused Daniel’s undershirt to his skin.

“Breathe deeply, Daniel. That’s it…”

Shamda sat Daniel on the ground and shoved his head between his knees.

Two tiny grains of sand had burrowed under Daniel’s thumbnail in a duet of gritty pain. It was a grounding feeling amidst a swirl of colours and quivering splatter of stars in the night’s sky.

Everything dipped and lurched. He panted, forcing his head up.

“Have…oooohhhh.” Daniel took off his glasses and tried not to vomit. “Have you ever heard of this orb, Shamda?”

The elder knelt and stroked hair from Daniel’s forehead, his wrinkles oddly soft. Daniel realized with an abrupt jolt that Shamda was copying what Jack had done when they first came to bring his descended self back home.

Back then, that comfort was the only thing that convinced Daniel SG-1 was his family.

Daniel had to swallow three times before the sandy landscape stopped blurring. He wiped the corner of his eye on his sleeve.

“There are legends of such time twins,” said Shamda, “but the dark eyed men knew more.”

Daniel’s calculated breathing escaped in a rush and hairs stood up on his arms. So many questions erupted from this sentence that Daniel flushed.

“Shamda, what—how—twins? Wait, no, I’m sorry, let’s start with the men. Dark eyed? They were dark eyed like your people?”

Shamda shook his head again, expression stormy. His finger looped an oval around his eyes and brows. “Very big eyes. They reflected the sun.”

“Sunglasses! They were wearing frames with arms, er, _sticks_ along their ears? Like my glasses here?”

“Yes!” Shamda lit up. “That’s it! And they wore dark, tailored clothing. Much like yours. Only they carried weapons and bulky chest pieces.”

Daniel decided not to mention the Beretta in his boot. He bit his lip. “How many men were there, Shamda?”

“Only three. They came out of the ring shortly after O’Neill and we lost track of them in the wilderness. They hid. Then, when O’Neill dialed new coordinates, they rushed through the ring’s water before we could stop them.”

“This is very bad,” said Daniel.

“Why? Aren’t they friends?”

Daniel stood to his feet. “I don’t know. But the way you describe them, they sound like a tactical team. Well trained and better prepared than me.”

Shamda patted Daniel’s brow again. “These men were cold, efficient. They did not care for O’Neill as you do. That is your greatest advantage.”

“I don’t care about Jack,” Daniel bit out.

Shamda nodded but didn’t seem to buy it any more than Daniel did.

For a long time the crackle of Shamda’s torch was the only sound. The village tents flapped against Daniel’s. Canvas on nylon, ancient against modern. He really was the alien here.

“Twins?” Daniel asked quietly. “There were two orbs in legend? We found only one on…on a different planet. I got stranded there once.”

“We discovered this legend on the abandoned city walls.” Shamda bowed his head. “As you well know, this planet belonged to a great civilization. Much more advanced than ours is, at least for now.”

Daniel frowned. “It doesn’t make sense.”

“What doesn’t?” asked Shamda.

“How would Jack have known about a second Scrambler? We thought we’d destroyed the only one.”

Shamda’s sudden smile seemed so out of place that vertigo assaulted Daniel again.

“Do you not know how cosmic artifacts work?”

“Apparently I don’t know anything,” said Daniel, flat.

“My dear child, even stargates, as you call them, need a destination—need a companion. It only makes sense that something like the orb has a partner too. Offspring of the stars are never alone.”

The weight of these words didn’t impact Daniel’s already stuttering heart until Shamda planted his torch in the sand and pulled him into a quick embrace.

Daniel hugged back but his arms felt like putty. His breathing skipped.

“We are all children of time,” whispered Shamda. “Why do you think you landed here in your fall from the heavens, hmm?”

When he stepped back and gave a soft smile, Daniel sensed he was missing the bigger picture.

Trying to create logic of Jack’s head space had left Daniel tired and weary. He couldn’t fathom if he’d ever make it to Earth again. It scared him more that he didn’t care if he did.

“Why did you send Jack to the other planet?” asked Daniel, to cut off this stampeding thought. 

“Because that is where our people stayed once and, I’m assuming, the makers of these…these Scramblers.”

Daniel’s brow scrunched. “You know where your people sojourned?”

“Of course,” said Shamda. “The coordinate symbols have been passed down for generations. As elder, I am now the keeper of those symbols. I gave them and the story of both Scramblers to Jack not because of his desperation, but because of his grief. His appalling loss.”

“Loss of what?” Daniel barked. “He knows nothing of sacrifice. Only self-serving.”

“Is that what torments you both so?”

Daniel looked away. “Two years ago, we were called out of an informal sabbatical to go on a mission. They needed my expertise and Jack…he wouldn’t let me go alone.

“I was afraid of the ‘gate after spending centuries trying to get home. He helped me with that phobia and we made it through. Everything was going fine. But when we got to the planet they…he…”

It had been eighteen months, eighteen months of long silences and no one to turn to, but Daniel realized this was the first time he’d ever spoken of that mission aloud.

Screams echoed between his ears. He felt Jack’s arm around his waist, his own fingers clawing it to bloody stripes. Cam was on the ground but he didn’t look right, half of his whole.

“…niel?”

There was blood on Cam’s face but it wasn’t his.

“Daniel?”

Warmth blossomed along Daniel’s back. The horror replay was replaced with a fire-warmed blanket. It enveloped his frame while a gnarled hand tucked in the edges.

“Shamda,” he said. His voice was a reed in a soft breeze.

“Dear child,” said the elder. “Your soul is weary.”

Daniel couldn’t argue with that. He sat up and wiped blood off his face that wasn’t there. “I’m sorry, Shamda. You’ve been wonderful, but I was foolish to think I could leave tomorrow. Jack can’t wait that long. The trail will be cold by then.”

Stumbling, Daniel began to dig his tent spikes out of the sand. He packed up with a flustered accuracy, well practiced motions sabotaged by grief and fear.

“Jackson, are you certain? Your spirit is not well.”

“Nope,” said Daniel. “But neither is Jack’s. He’s not dying on my watch.”

Shamda chuckled with an exasperated roll of his eyes. “Arrom. You are always leaving us for adventures.”

For the first time since this whole fiasco, Daniel’s smile was broad and genuine. “Thank you, Shamda. You’ve been better than I deserve.”

Shamda pressed a strip of parchment in Daniel’s hand, cluttered by seven charcoal symbols. Then he captured Daniel’s face between his palms. “Go find the pair.”


	8. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The stargate connected with its signature noise and flickering lights. It was the first time in Sam’s life she jumped at a wormhole locking.
> 
> “What is it?” Cam asked.
> 
> “It…it’s Daniel!” cried Walter.

'And I'll use you as a makeshift gauge  
Of how much to give and how much to take,  
Oh I'll use you as a warning sign  
That if you talk enough sense then you'll lose your mind.'

"I Found" ~ Amber Run

The receptionist eyed them, dubious. Her gaze lingered a moment on Cam’s wheelchair, the blanket that was too flat for Cam to have knees or feet, before narrowing on Sam. Her pen hesitated over the clipboard.

“Sister, you say?”

Sam clapped a hand on Cam’s arm and put on her best watery eyes. She’d even let her mascara run. “Carter is my married name. I just had to be here to support Cammy for his first session. He hasn’t even talked about this since…since…”

She blew her nose noisily in a handkerchief.

Cam sighed. “Come on, sis. We talked about this.”

“I know,” Sam quavered, laying it on thick. “But I just couldn’t let you do it alone. You’re such a macho air force guy and you never talk about—”

“Oh not this again!”

“Yes, this again!”

“You think everyone should cry!”

“It helps process feelings!”

The receptionist’s eyes widened and she put up her hands. “Alright, ma’am? _Ma’am_. You’re going to have to wait out here while Colonel Mitchell is in session with Dr. Ramirez.”

Sam squeezed her hand too for good measure, feeling its clamminess. “Thank you!”

The receptionist snatched her hand back and then shuffled away, pale. When her back turned, Sam threw a sly wink at Cam. He fist bumped her behind the purse on her knees.

“Cammy? Really?”

“I had to sell it.”

Cam shook his head with a snicker. “And sell it we did.”

“You got this?” Sam whispered. She had to check one last time.

Cam smiled. “I have the easy part. I’m just amazed Dr. Ramirez didn’t catch on that I was a conflict of interest, knowing Jack, when we talked on the phone.” He nudged Sam. “And I’m psyched to be back in the game.”

Warmth rushed through Sam and she pecked Cam’s cheek.

“Aw, stop it,” Cam groused, louder. “I don’t know why I agreed to let you come!”

Sam played along. “Because you need to lean on people!”

“More Dr. Phil logic, sis?”

The receptionist hurried between them. “Colonel Mitchell, if you’ll follow me. Dr. Ramirez has a room set up for you down the hall.”

A pair of swinging, saloon-style doors separated the waiting area from the row of therapy rooms. The instant they swung shut behind Cam’s chair, Sam was up and over to the receptionist’s desk. The woman had left a steaming mug of coffee on a stack of file folders. Digging through her purse, Sam produced a packet of fine white powder.

“Please let this work,” Sam muttered as she ripped open the packet.

She only had seconds to stir in the powder with her finger before clacking heels interrupted. Sam darted back to her chair and pretended to weep softly.

Sam had to wait thirty minutes. _Thirty minutes_.

She watched that receptionist down her coffee like it was the last on planet Earth. Sam imagined Daniel next to her, what he’d say if he were here.

Coupled with the smell of black coffee, she could almost hear his voice—“_What, you learn this kind of cloak and dagger stuff in military school or summer camp? And they call me childish_.”

Sam couldn’t fight a smile.

It grew bigger when the receptionist’s eyes widened. She put a hand to her stomach and ran towards a bathroom down the hall.

Sam was up out of her chair before the bathroom door closed. A fat filing cabinet took up the whole wall behind the desk. Sam tore through it.

“O’Neill, O’Neill, O’Neill…”

_Come on. Please let it be here. _

Sweat beaded on her arms. She flipped through one drawer and swore, bumping it closed with her hip. She yanked open another one.

_...O’Leary, O’Neill!_

Her eyes skimmed Jack’s patient file and clouded with confusion.

She’d expected Dr. Ramirez’s observation of PTSD symptoms.

She had _not_ expected Jack’s severe depression born of loss. Loss of contact.

No wonder he’d been vulnerable enough to finally see a shrink. Sam ignored another fleeting mental picture of Daniel and flipped to medications at the back.

“Lithium? Who prescribes lithium anymore? That’s not even what was in the bottle—”

If someone had told Sam a week ago that her quiet cellphone ringing would send her tightly wound self into an adrenaline induced fumble for a machine gun that wasn’t there, she would have ordered _them_ to get a psych evaluation.

Sam jumped halfway to the ozone layer before she dug the thing out of her pocket. Her hands trembled.

She tucked it between her ear and shoulder. “Carter here.”

“_Sam, I finally recognized one of the weird elements in those drugs._”

Sam’s heart sped up at the doctor’s voice. “Carolyn, what is it?”

“_I didn’t recognize it at first because of its form. I’ve never seen it as a powder. It’s actually quite fascinating…_”

“Carolyn.” Sam halted the woman’s stalling. “What did you find?”

Lam sighed. “_The primary element is naquadah. The others are a synthesis of naquadah and a hallucinogen called Ketamine_.”

White shock reigned for a full minute. Sam went rigid. Nothing processed passed the inexcusable fact:

“It’s someone from the program.”

“_I know_,” said Carolyn quietly.

“It…someone from the program hurt Jack…They _hurt _him.”

“_I know, Sam. Take some deep breaths_.”

“Only someone with access to mission files and samples could have done this.” Sam said it with a rare kind of fury. Blank. Single minded. Ready to rend apart at an instant’s notice. 

Carolyn sucked in a sharp breath. “_What about the psychiatrist?_”

Sam shook her head then remembered Carolyn couldn’t see it. “He is, sadly, just pawn in all of this. He really is a licensed psychiatrist and I’ve never seen him before. Dr. Ramirez wasn’t even the one who treated Jack. It was some random doctoral intern.”

“_Who?_”

Sam flipped through the file. “A Lowell Ackman.”

“_Maybe it’s a cover name for someone on base. I don’t recognize it._”

“I hand check every employee who passes through the front gate,” Sam argued. “I trust these men and women with my life. I can’t believe any of them would have done it. Unless…oh no.”

“_What? Sam, what?_”

Sam’s nostrils flared. “Carolyn, put Walter on the phone.”

There was a pause and the beep of switched phone lines before Walter asked—“_Colonel? How is infiltrating the psychiatrist’s office going?_”

Sam’s mouth swung open. “How do you know about that?”

“_Did the laxative work? That was a nice touch._”

“Harriman.”

“_Er…Teal’c thought someone else should know in case of contingency situations_.”

“Traitor,” Sam muttered, placing the file back and resuming her seat.

“_What can I do for you, Colonel?_” Walter wisely changed the subject.

“Get me the IOA. I need Agent Bowman on base ASAP.”

A long, hesitating quiet ensued. Sam’s stomach clenched as she resumed her seat. She swallowed, avoiding eye contact even when Cam wheeled back out and paid for his session. He shook an elderly Dr. Ramirez’s hand with a genuine smile.

“_Sam_,” Walter began. Her heart skipped a beat at this seminal use of her first name. “_Agent Bowman is already here_.”

Sam saw red.

* * *

“You knew!”

Sam marched down the SGC hall with an accusing finger and eyes kin to an erupting volcano. Carolyn and Teal’c ran at her heels, the doctor panting something about blood pressure while Cam wheeled furiously on their six. His hands pumped like train pistons.

“You knew that day you interviewed Daniel. You knew all along!”

Bowman put up both hands. “Colonel Carter—”

“And get out of my control room!” Sam barked.

Bowman obediently walked down the steps to meet an irate Sam. She got right up in the agent’s face, her finger on his sternum.

Despite this, her voice came out with a deadly brand of softness. “You sent us to do your dirty work. Admit it—the IOA has a leak and you knew all along.”

Agent Bowman had the grace to blush. “I won’t deny it. We first noticed a problem two years ago.”

Cam’s face drained of all colour. “No. _No._”

“I’m so confused,” said Carolyn.

Bowman ran a hand through his hair. “I truly am sorry.”

“Cut the crap,” said Sam. “What happened?”

“The IOA didn’t set up that disastrous mission two years ago, even though the mandate came from our organization,” Bowman confessed. “Someone else gave the order. SG-1, along with Dr. Jackson’s escort of retired Jack O’Neill, left the planet before we could stop you.”

Walter and Hughes had come down the stairs at the commotion. Now, both looked ready to vomit. Sam couldn’t hear anything past a ringing in her ears and Cam hid his face behind a hand.

“Is it phantom pains?” asked Dr. Lam, an automatic question after all this time.

Cam shook his head. “I wish. This hurts worse.”

Sam exhaled a sob-like breath.

“Why did the IOA not inform us?” asked Teal’c.

Bowman scoffed. “We thought we could find the mole on our own, flush him out. So far…well, here we are. This mole has even stolen naquadah samples. We think he also threatened General Landry. Why else would he step down?”

“Trauma maybe?” Walter snapped. “He blamed himself for that mission.”

“You have to understand,” said Bowman, “if we told the SGC or the president about the mole, we’d lose all credibility.”

“Too late.” Sam glared at Bowman with bright eyes. “You lost credibility the moment you stepped on my base.”

No one spoke for a long time. Employees wandering down the hall took one look at the seven, ashen faced figures and turned around.

They were immobile. A wet patch formed in drips on the front of Cam’s shirt and Teal’c rested one huge hand on his shoulder. Carolyn accepted Walter’s silently offered Kleenex.

Sam gazed at these people. These broken, loyal people. One guilt ridden IOA agent.

_Seven people. Just like a gate address_, Sam marveled. _And yet none of us have a clue where we’re going_.

“Why would someone order SG-1 to go to a booby trapped planet?” Hughes finally asked.

Sam shrugged. Invisible stones weighed her shoulders. “Experiment, maybe. Or greed—the acquisition of some artifact, which is why we needed Daniel in the first place. There was writing on the MALP footage our archaeologists couldn’t translate.”

_We’ve been set up. _Pawns. They were all pawns in someone’s long term game.

Cam lifted his head after what felt like an eternity. “Whatever the reason, we need to work together to find our leak.”

Sam’s jaw flexed. “Cam—”

“I know, Sam. I hate the IOA too but right now we have a common enemy.” He glanced at Agent Bowman and then at Sam. “We need all hands on deck to find Jack.”

Carolyn squeezed Cam’s hand. She met Sam’s eyes and nodded. Teal’c bowed his head in agreement.

Walter opened his mouth but just then Klaxons blared overhead. Walter’s station lit up like a cherry bomb factory.

Everyone followed Walter and Hughes up the stairs. The control room became crowded but none of them noticed. Cam didn’t even argue when Teal’c lifted the man from his chair and carried him in his arms, bridal style.

The stargate connected with its signature noise and flickering lights. It was the first time in Sam’s life she jumped at a wormhole locking.

“What is it?” Cam asked.

“It…it’s Daniel!” cried Walter.

Everyone startled.

Sam squinted at the console. “Daniel? Are you sure?”

“Perfectly sure! He even left us a message.”

“A message?” asked Doctor Lam. “How do you know?”

It was Hughes who answered. He simply pointed through the window.

There, splayed on the ramp where someone had thrown it through, was a giant sheet of tent canvas with seven charcoal figures and three words in giant block letters—

_Call. Now. ~Daniel._


	9. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Teal’c, if we don’t stop this mole—”
> 
> “I am here, Samantha Carter.”
> 
> “Daniel’s counting on me—”
> 
> “You are not alone.”

'My only weakness, is knowing your secrets  
and holding them close, and hold them tight.  
I know the way to silently make you  
smile with my eyes, when you're trying to fight.'

"When You Find Me" ~ Joshua Radin

“We really should get T-shirts printed,” said Daniel, swatting at yet another mosquito.

Too late. He was too late. _Again_.

He stared at the ornate wooden box, Scrambler-sized hole in the frame, and Jack’s discarded green cap.

Remnants taunted him: a sleeping bag and crumbs from some freeze dried meal. The campfire wood just outside the tiny, shed sized temple was still warm.

_I missed him by less than an hour. He retrieved this Scrambler less than an hour ago._

“Too late, Jack,” said Daniel. “Why are we always too late?”

The unmistakable “whoosh” of the ‘gate answered him. Daniel set the box down and stepped out of the temple.

He shaded his eyes against the planet’s murky sun, a muted butter colour. Lush grass whispered under his boots. Though no birds filled the skies, fairy-like insects licked nectar from thistle plants. 

The stargate was set between the temple and a flanking of dense forest. Daniel prayed no animals lived in this area. 

A motorized whirring _whomp_ed through the horizon. The MALP trundled down the steps, its camera head twisting in every direction.

Daniel’s heart soared and, with a little laugh, he waved. After a pause, the claw attachment snapped together and out again, like the MALP was waving back. 

“_Daniel?_” came Sam’s tinny voice. “_You okay?_”

Daniel put his hands on his knees to be at eye level with the camera. He grabbed a black radio that had been strapped to the MALP. Bringing it to his lips, he clicked the receiver button. “Alive and empty handed.”

An audible sigh of relief crackled. “_Thank God_.”

The balm of her voice made Daniel light headed. “I didn’t know how much I missed you guys until I ran away.”

“_Just a like a kid_,” Sam snarked, her voice full of a smile. 

Daniel grinned like an idiot. “You got my message, I see. Hope my Houdini act didn’t cause too much fuss.”

“_Well…the IOA isn’t concerned about it because they flubbed up on their end too. Majorly_.”

“How?” asked Daniel, frowning. “I just called to ask you about inter-planetary trackers.”

“_It…the IOA…_”

“Sam?” Daniel prompted. Sam was a woman of action and dizzying intelligence—hesitation was rare.

“_They have a leak_.”

He blinked. “What? As in…a mole?”

Sam sighed again, so loud it nearly maxed out the bandwidth. Daniel tapped the squelch button. His palm sweat around the radio.

“_This is a long term case of sabotage, Daniel. They’ve had a mole since that failed operation two years ago. They didn’t order it. Someone went so far as to call you and Jack in for that mission, disguised as an IOA mandate_.”

“Wha—No.” His head spun, a reeling miasma of denial. “That can’t be true.”

“_Daniel. Think about it. This makes too much sense. We even found drugs in O’Neill’s house—containing a powerful naquadah synthesis. They dulled Jack out of his wits long enough to escape the planet. We still don’t know why, but I thought I’d give you a head’s up in case you find him and he’s…not himself_.”

“You mean _when _we find Jack.”

“_Right_,” Sam corrected herself. “_Sure_.”

Daniel adjusted his glasses and squinted up at the sun. One of the insects settled on his watch, fluttering at the reflective surface. All around him lazed warm scents, fragrant flowers and an earthy pine smell. This planet was peaceful and uninhabited.

Daniel breathed in deeply, felt no better for it, then let it out. 

For the first time since Abydos, Daniel marveled that he was talking to someone half a galaxy away. He felt like Sam was right there in front of him when in fact he was the only soul alive for light years. 

“_Wait a minute_,” said Sam. Her voice sharpened. “_Trackers?_”

“Yeah, about that…I’m, well, I’m not the only one on Jack’s trail. There’s a tactical team that—”

“I thought I heard the ‘gate engage,” shouted a harsh voice.

“Over here!”

Gruff voices loomed from the woods and twigs snapped under heavy steps.

Daniel shot to his feet. He had only seconds to switch off the radio and dash across the meadow. The toe of his boot hit the temple just as three black-clad men tromped out of the trees. 

Daniel crouched behind an altar and peered over its lip. 

_Not the only soul for light years after all_.

Despite his racing heart, he smiled. 

_I don’t have to track Jack—I just have to keep up with these men. _Why not let the bad guys do the dirty work for a change?

When Daniel flipped the radio back on, he thought he had a wrong frequency. He winced, dialing the volume down. It sounded like a cat on the other end, hissing, spitting, and…swearing?

“Sam?” Daniel whispered.

More swearing, plus Walter’s frazzled tone in the background. Daniel only hoped the three men hadn’t heard it. 

“Sam, what are you—?”

Sam sounded close to tears. “_Don’t you _ever_ scare me like that. You hear me? Not now. Not after…_”

“Radios. Sam, I’m so, so sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”

Daniel flashed back two years in his mind, the hellish nightmare that Sam and Teal’c had only been able to hear via radio. They had _sprinted_ three miles only to come upon the bloodbath. 

Another pause ensued and Daniel could physically hear Sam push down the nexus of emotion.

Daniel waited patiently, eyes on the tactical team surveying the MALP and arguing over some hand held device. 

Several rasping breaths later, Sam was able to match Daniel’s harsh whisper. “_If you turn that radio off again so help me—_”

“I won’t. I promise.”

“_What happened? Who was that man I heard?_”

Daniel scratched at a nick on his ear and arched an eyebrow. “Remember that tactical team I was talking about? Turns out they’re still here. I wish I could figure out how they’re tracking Jack, even without being on the same planet. It’s why I called in the first place.”

Another silence, this one filled with Sam’s mental calculations. Daniel relaxed. This non-sound he knew like the inside of his eyelids. SGC’s soundscape wafted in the background.

Daniel’s finger ached from holding the radio button down but he didn’t dare take it off. It trembled with the knowledge that this was his only lifeline to people that cared whether he lived or died. 

“_They can’t_,” Sam finally said. “_No long range wave length would work across such distances_.”

Daniel licked his lips, salty with a nervous sweat. The three men had removed the DHD cover. They tapped the hand held device against several crystals and it chirped loud enough for Daniel to hear almost six meters away.

He startled. “Sam? You still there?”

“_Always_.”

“Sam, can crystals store previously dialed coordinates? Like redial on a phone?”

“_Absolutely. We’ve used it before, actually—_”

One of the men shifted a crystal and the wormhole disengaged in a rush. All three men cheered. 

The event horizon dissipating froze the breath in Daniel’s lungs. Sam’s cut off voice rang in his ears.

“Sam?” Daniel’s voice broke. “S-Sam?”

Nothing.

The smallest of the three men began punching in new coordinates. Daniel watched in shock. The other two had moved, giving Daniel a perfect view of the lit up symbols. He mentally noted the positioning.

It was the perfect angle, better than a front row seat.

A wormhole engaged with the familiar _whoosh_. Light shimmered off insect wings and Daniel’s lenses. Part of him wanted desperately to just wait for Sam to redial, to sit tight.

But this was it.

_My only chance._

The tactical team filed through, leaving him alone yet again.

Daniel closed his eyes. His jaw tightened. Opening his eyes, he got off his knees and bolted for the stargate—

Both hands cradled the radio to his chest.

* * *

“Daniel? _Daniel_?”

“It’s shutting down,” said Walter.

Sam clutched at her own radio. She kept it tight to her face to hide a tremble in her lips. The wormhole evaporated, along with Sam’s last reserve.

After an endless moment, she set the radio down on the console. Sam’s fingers twitched over its surface. Before she walked away, she met Walter’s eyes.

“That radio doesn’t move,” she whispered. “If someone so much as eyes it the wrong way, I want to know. Got it?”

Walter almost scoffed. “Over my dead body is someone touching it.”

_Daniel will call again. He has to._

Walter nodded, and Sam realized she’d said this out loud.

Sam went down the steps in a daze. Cam was combing through IOA personnel files with Bowman and Teal’c. Lam worked floors above on figuring out the drug synthesis.

People passed Sam in the hall, chattered greetings, but she didn’t hear one word of it. It took three floors for her to realize where she was going.

Sam made it to Daniel’s guest quarters before her legs finally gave out. She sat on the edge of the bed, forehead in her hands. The base’s central heating hummed like a giant bumblebee.

She envied that all the men in her life could cry where she couldn’t. That now, when she needed to process most, her spirit was a dry well.

A meaty arm pulled Sam close to an even meatier chest.

“When was the last time you slept, Samantha Carter?”

“Teal’c?” Sam blinked, bleary, at the contours of his T-shirt. She hadn’t even heard him open the door. “No one on this team has slept.”

“But you longer than us,” said Teal’c. “By my estimation it has been over forty eight hours.”

Sam’s eyes hardened. “I won’t rest until our boys can.”

“Samantha Carter.” Teal’c’s voice was little more than a breath. He cupped Sam’s head and brought it to his shoulder.

“Teal’c, if we don’t stop this mole—”

“I am here, Samantha Carter.”

“Daniel’s counting on me—”

“You are not alone.”

“And I never signed up for this. Landry just left and dropped this in my lap—”

“_Rest_, Samantha Carter. Sleep.”

So she did. Sam closed her eyes. She was out before she realized that the wet spot on Teal’c’s shirt meant even he was crying.


	10. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daniel cried out, a sharp, high sound like a bullet firing. It echoed off the night’s descending chill.
> 
> Jack was there so fast it defied the laws of physics.

'It's all you get  
For holding on  
To something that will never come.  
Am I holding on  
To something that will never come?'

"Heartbeats" ~ Aron Wright

In the backwater streets of Santa Cruz, Bolivia, there lived an old woman who had no teeth.

She existed among broken crates and chicken sellers with hens slung over their handlebars. Mud caked to her shoes when rain came down from the mountains, but she lived to sit on that giant spool that had once stored wiring for power lines overhead.

Her eyes had the amber glow of stars witnessed, stars fallen, stars born. She used to read coca leaves.

Once, she grabbed the arm of a lost little boy who’d wandered too far from his parents. His skin was an Irish, pasty white compared to the locals’ cinnamon shading.

She’d looked him in the eye, compassionate and otherworldly. Amber met lens covered blue.

“The number thirteen will trip us all in the end,” she’d said. “Beware of thirteen.”

Everyone called the old woman superstitious. Especially the dig team from New York.

But she was right.

It was on a frozen planet, knocking on the door of a yurt-like structure and having not slept in God-knows how long, that Daniel remembered the old woman who’d warned him about the number thirteen.

“Your friend has not been here,” said a man in the yurt. “But three men have. Dressed like the night.”

Daniel thanked the man and trudged back to the gate. The tactical team had already dialed coordinates, darted through. Daniel followed.

His boots met the leaf-strewn ground of a temperate, meadow land climate. He shivered as snow melted off his clothes, and he remembered.

_Thirteen. This makes planet number thirteen I’ve followed Jack and these men to._

And yet Daniel was still no closer.

_Where are you going, Jack? What are you looking for?_

More immediate problems soon emerged—the tactical team had begun a grueling sprint. Daniel’s tired legs pumped to keep them in his sights while still being quiet.

He was losing them. In doing so, he was losing Jack.

Daniel’s heart rebelled against his rib cage in a rhythm that had nothing to do with exertion.

He was losing Jack.

Daniel was so absorbed that he didn’t notice a branch in the narrow boreal path. The archaeologist tripped and crashed to his knees, shredding the palms of his hands.

Stunned, Daniel’s vision spun. It was nightfall here and black closed in all around. Daniel pounded the ground, his breath emerging in ragged puffs.

He leaned back on his knees and roared, without care for who heard. Stars shone overhead, similar constellations to Earth’s night sky; he was in his own solar system, then.

Amber eyes had watched these stars not so long ago.

So had a grumpy colonel’s telescope. Looking for Abydos, looking for Daniel. Looking for hope.

The glasses came off, replaced by a hand. Daniel breathed, shallow sounds with no witnesses but the trees. His whole body trembled.

The fact was immutable, awful, a guillotine that Daniel was about to die upon:

_I’m failing Jack._

Jack had saved Daniel’s sorry behind more times than any man had saved another and Daniel couldn’t even catch up with him. Thirteen planets. Thirteen chances, more than enough. And he failed every time.

_I’m _failing_ Jack. _

“I was wrong to be bitter,” Daniel sobbed. “It…I…you can’t…”

He might have hunched there on a planet at the edge of the galaxy, tearing himself apart, for the rest of his life. Just then, however, the moon flashed off a silver glint.

Daniel knew that grey haired silhouette better than his own name.

“_Jack_!”

Daniel heard arguing voices in the other direction, far away.

_The tactical team lost track of Jack! This is it!_

Jack moved at a good click, but the sheen of his leather jacket made him easier to follow. The forest slanted downwards, trees thinning in favour of an orange glow.

Daniel crested the hill and gaped at an enormous city below, one that stretched farther than his eye could see. 

It was the biggest civilization he had come across in any of the thirteen planets. Though similar to Biblical Jerusalem in modernity, it was a bustling trade hub, even at night. Like an interplanetary Manhattan.

Men wore blue caps and the women lacy pant suits. Daniel barely spared it a second glance before stumbling down after Jack. His hands throbbed.

The general had made it to the edge of the city. Even in their strange clothes, the two men didn’t garner any attention.

It was the first time ever that Daniel ignored glyphs on buildings.

Jack flew now. Daniel had never run so fast in his life. It was a cosmic dance, beautiful, founded at the beginning of the world. 

Young after old. Friend pursuing friend.

Daniel leapt clean over a fruit stall and landed with an ‘oomph.’ Jack dodged to the left now in a sudden beeline for the outskirts of the city.

“Move out of the way!” Daniel hollered, waving his arms at pedestrians. “_Move_!”

He missed a landing and the embers of a fire flew. People screamed but Daniel just kept on running. He ducked under awnings, around children. Sweat soaked his back. His boots were a military tattoo—

_ThudThudThudThudThud._

Adrenaline sharpened his eyesight. His younger legs were gaining on the silver blur that was his friend.

“Jack, please!”

At this, finally, the general slowed. He stopped but didn’t turn around.

City sounds quieted, replaced by wind through the grasses. Jack’s back was a frothy line and he too trembled, unsteady on his feet. 

“Danny? Where are you?”

Daniel almost passed out. It was the first time he’d heard Jack’s voice in two years. The weak call of his nickname threatened to bring him to his knees.

He dared to smile. “Oh, Jack, you wouldn’t believe—”

Without warning, the bombastic ending to an already nightmare-like fantasia, a gloved hand slammed over Daniel’s mouth.

He tasted blood. More arms joined the first, one an iron bar around his waist and two others on his biceps. They dragged him backwards. The whole thing happened in near total silence.

Jack began walking away once more. Daniel struggled. No way was he losing Jack with less than ten feet between them.

For every step Jack took, the arms yanked Daniel back towards the city. Tears stung his eyes.

_I’m failing Jack._

“You are not messing up this operation,” hissed a voice in Daniel’s ear. He bucked but the arms were too strong. A fist cannon balled him in the gut.

Someone laughed. “You don’t think we know you’ve been following us, Doctor Jackson? Why do you think you’ve been able to follow a trained unit for so long, hmm? We needed you to keep up. Gotta have a front row seat for the end of the world.”

Another laugh and someone spit in his eyes. Daniel didn’t process half of this past the panic in his lungs. This wasn’t just efficiency.

_This is anger._ People doing things for money didn’t achieve this level of anger. He felt the hate pouring off all three men’s bodies. _What is going on?_

Daniel freed an arm and stretched it out in a futile attempt to reach Jack.

He was eight years old, reaching for parents who would never hold him again. Being restrained.

In pulling against the arms, something gave around his ribs with a loud _POP_.

The men swore in surprise. And Daniel knew with frosty assurance that he would sooner rip himself in half than lose Jack now.

The hand released Daniel’s mouth. Before he could shout in victory, the fist pummeled his stomach again.

And another. Then another. Trained combat hits to inflict maximum damage.

His cracked rib broke completely. Daniel couldn’t even double over because the other two held him in a starfish position. He didn’t make a sound—_couldn’t_—while more spitting rained down on him.

And Jack walked further away.

Daniel didn’t mean for it to happen, honestly. It wasn’t even painful. But a bare hand came up to slap him on the mouth and the petty brutality caught him off guard.

Daniel cried out, a sharp, high sound like a bullet firing. It echoed off the night’s descending chill.

Jack was there so fast it defied the laws of physics.

He swooped in like an avenging angel and the three men’s laughter turned to choked shock. Daniel may have been no match for the three tactical men, but they were powerless in the face of a protective Jack O’Neill.

Even with eyes unfocused, glazed, and shadowed with sickness, Jack managed to kick one man in the sternum and throw another against a stone wall before Daniel’s next breath.

His hands were everywhere, bashing two heads together, wrenching a hand off Daniel’s arm and breaking someone’s wrist in the process. A storm roiled in his irate gaze. 

Freed, Daniel leaned over on his knees, one arm around his middle. He wanted to speak but pain lanced through his body.

He gazed at a dark patch on the front of his shirt and realized the blood was his own, dripping from his mouth. Shudders raced through his limbs. 

The general continued his furious MMA routine. It was raw force, no finesse.

He only stopped because all three men lay on the ground, groaning. Daniel wondered when he’d lost the Taser. 

Jack glanced at Daniel but didn’t seem to actually _see _anything, like he was gazing through Daniel at a distant skyline. 

“Jack?”

Jack was a wounded animal, brow confused. “Danny?”

_I’m right here! _Daniel wanted to scream it to the heavens. He couldn’t, though, because just then an arm wrapped around his throat.

“Tell him to give us the Scrambler or I shoot him,” said a low, pained voice.

Daniel’s lips pulled tight over his teeth. These men understood how to play the game. He cared very little if he died. But if _Jack _died…

“Do it,” the voice hissed. “We need that thing yesterday.”

“Ja…” Daniel cleared his throat and tried again. “Jack, hey. Look at me.”

Jack attempted to, he really did. His concussed-like eyes roved the air and settled on the city wall.

Though he shivered, he wasn’t sweating. It looked unnatural and ominous.

On instinct, Daniel’s arm again stretched out for him. “Jack? Can you reach into your pocket for me?”

Jack might not have been able to see Daniel but he certainly heard him. Daniel hadn’t even finished speaking and Jack’s hand came out with the Scrambler.

Tension suddenly thrummed in the air. The scrolled orb glowed faintly, that horrid, cosmic colour Daniel had no name for and that haunted not only his dreams but all his waking hours. 

“Thank you, Jack. Now…just walk forward…”

Despite the lethal grace of seconds before, Jack stumbled over his own toes on the way to Daniel and his captor.

Daniel’s heart ached. His Adam’s apple bobbed against the rough fabric. 

Less than a foot away, Jack halted. The motion was abrupt and the men exchanged uneasy words. Whatever it was about the situation, the atmosphere, the smells, the Scrambler, or the memories that came with it—Daniel had no idea—Jack’s eyes sharpened to razors.

He didn’t seem concerned about the men. He didn’t gape at the uniforms or the elbow around Daniel’s throat.

No, his eyes burned at the object near Daniel’s head. 

“Gun,” said Jack with a cement cold tone of righteous fury. “_No gun_.”

The sight of that automatic so close to Daniel’s wavering face broke Jack. 

“Charlie,” he murmured, softer. 

Again, Daniel’s mind went to that Bolivian lady, the gentle tone that belied her wiry grip on his arm. He remembered the commanding feel of her fingers, her toothless mouth an underscore. 

The tactical team never saw Jack coming. His weak tone had fooled them all.

One minute he was standing there and the next he tore the gun away from Daniel’s head. He flung it into the grass, as far as he could. His knuckles broke the largest man’s nose before anyone registered that he’d pulled Daniel free. 

“Daniel?” Jack blinked and for a split second, the two men saw each other clearly. His jaw worked a few times and the paleness was replaced by a tight flush. “_Daniel_?”

“Jack—”

One of the men reached up from the ground. His fist drove a loaded syringe into Jack’s hip.

And then Jack was off. Off into the night, wincing.

“Jack, wait! Jack!”

Daniel lunged for his friend but the man hadn’t been a black ops for nothing. He was gone. 

“Jackson’s getting away! Boss’ll kill us!”

“Grab him!”

No choice. No other option—Daniel fled into the trees. It was either do or be caught.

He’d only sprinted a few meters up the tor when the first bullet whizzed by his ear. The second swiped his thigh and Daniel bit his lip to keep from shrieking. Hot blood oozed down his leg.

_Make that do or die_.


	11. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Sam,” said Carolyn, “the cells are dead.”
> 
> This moment quivered. Fragile to the point it was beyond repair even though it hadn’t broken yet.
> 
> “No,” Sam whispered. “That can’t be right. We injected those cells less than three days ago.”

'I'm a long time travelling here below,  
I'm a long time travelling away from home,  
I'm a long time travelling here below...  
To lay this body down.'

"Long Time Traveller" ~ The Wailin' Jennys

Balmy up-swells of air from the hot springs below made the rain forest both wet and pleasant. A few more footsteps and the path ended at a sheer drop off into emerald rapids below. The sun and moon shone at the same time, as if they were competing with each other. 

Rain and condensation became one entity, their love child dripping off a pale philodendron.

Its path to the ground was hypnotic, suspended. The droplet hovered a moment in the air and waters below froze.

Every living thing in the rain forest silenced. 

Suspended animation, that’s what this was called. Sam knew this one. She wanted to raise her hand, but there was no one around for miles. 

Isn’t that what you did, raise your hand to answer the test?

Or, no, that was ‘be silent while taking a test.’ Raise your hand to answer a question.

Weren’t tests full of unsolvable questions, though?

“_Colonel Carter..._”

But she _had _solved this. She’d solved them all.

“_Sam._”

Hadn’t she?

“Sam, wake up!”

An earthquake shattered the suspension. Sam lurched.

The sight of water droplets seemed so fitting that it took Sam ten whole seconds to realize she wasn’t dreaming anymore. 

Carolyn knelt before Daniel’s guest bed (the only place Sam could sleep now) lab coat rumpled and cheeks red like she’d run up the stairs. She ducked her face.

More droplets plinked to the cement floor. Her shoulders were an earthquake too, heaving in tandem with high pitched, siphoned breaths. 

Sam, bleary, frowned at her. “Carolyn?”

The sight of the stoic doctor weeping for all she was worth seemed more unnatural than the suspended rain forest. 

“I was wrong,” gasped Dr. Lam. “So wrong. The naquadah synthesis isn’t just confusing O’Neill’s primary senses. It’s…”

Sam sat up, with the help of Carolyn’s hand. She glanced at the clock.

“Carolyn, it’s three in the morning.”

The doctor nodded. “I know. I wouldn’t have woken you otherwise. But I finally realized what the drug is doing to the cell samples we’re testing.”

“Well, then let’s go.” Sam swung her legs to the floor. “I want to have a look at how they’re—”

“Colonel.”

Sam, in the process of tying her boots, stopped when something shifted in the air. Carolyn’s lips worked. She shook her head.

“Sam,” said Carolyn, “the cells are dead.”

This moment quivered. Fragile to the point it was beyond repair even though it hadn’t broken yet.

“No,” Sam whispered. “That can’t be right. We injected those cells less than three days ago.”

Carolyn hid her face again. Sam’s gaze, vacant, was lined. Her spirit had never been so old.

Absurdly, she remembered a lullaby her mother used to sing. It talked about lying down after a long journey—dying. The melody was heavy, an incense of tired warmth.

_“Lay this body down_…_”_

Sam wondered if this wouldn’t lay the four of them down in the end. Especially Daniel and Jack. They’d been outrunning death since they opened the ‘gate.

They would not outrun this one. Sam suddenly knew it with agonizing clarity.

“You’re sure?” asked Sam.

Carolyn composed herself with a long inhale. “The drug isn’t designed to kill but with the quantities O’Neill’s been taking, it is lethal. Someone used this like a long term poison. What an awful way to die.”

“How long does he have?”

“Sam, I’m not sure—”

“How long, Carolyn? Your best estimate?”

Carolyn’s grief was so strong it looked like anger. Her eyes pinched and then opened again. “Twenty four hours. Maybe.”

_Lay us down._

“_Unscheduled off world activation!_”

“Colonel Carter?” Steel Hughes poked his head in. He looked uncomfortable and avoided eye contact. “The stargate is activating. I don’t know how he could tell from one chevron, but Walter seems to think it’s Dr. Jackson.”

The two women bolted out the door. Though shorter, Hughes’ younger legs kept pace behind them.

Airmen flattened to the wall while they ran by, wearing grave, furrowed expressions.

Sam bounded up the control room steps in two strides. The stargate had already engaged.

“It’s Daniel,” said Walter, voice tense. “I’ve been keeping him calm.”

Sam snatched the radio. “Daniel?”

“_Sam! Sorry it’s been a few hours since my last call_.”

“Hours? Daniel, it’s been _two days_ since I talked to you.”

“_What? I didn’t…that explains the wooziness…haven’t…slept_.”

Her heart skipped at her friend’s pained tone. “Are you okay?”

“_Uh…depends on your definition. By the way, is there an artery on the side of your thigh? It bleeds _a lot_. Oh, and I found Jack. Actually…I lost him again_.”

There was no opportunity for anyone in the control room to flip out, thanks to a chorus of bullet fire in the background.

“Daniel,” Sam barked. “Get through the ‘gate. Now.”

“_I would_,” Daniel panted, “_but crawling towards the ‘gate would attract attention. Like, black ops with guns kind of attention. They shot my hand too when I dialed the ‘gate. Had to run. Now I can’t…get…up. I think I’ll stick to hiding_.”

“That’s a good plan,” said Sam. “Stay put and we’ll come to you. I’m getting back up.”

With her free hand, Sam snapped her fingers without looking. An airman ran off to page a team.

“_How’s the drug testing going?_” asked Daniel. “_Found a cure yet?_”

Carolyn’s face fell. She turned away. Hughes had gone very still.

Sam’s throat worked with the effervescent constriction of a garrote. “Daniel, we only have twenty four hours. It’s killing him.”

Silence. Utter, concussive silence. Indigo light shimmered off their faces.

“_But…you guys can find an antidote, right? We’ll bring him back and…_”

Everyone looked to Carolyn in a desperate bid. She shook her head.

“There is no cure,” said Sam quietly. “I’m sorry, Daniel.”

“_So that’s it?_” Even light years away, bleeding, sleep deprived, and hungry, Daniel had fight left in him. Sam almost grinned. It was traditional Daniel Jackson. “_We’re settling for bringing him back in a nice coffin? Hope that nothing else kills him before the drug does?_”

“I’m sorry, Daniel.”

“_You’ve been saying that a lot lately_.”

“So have you.” Sam watched Carolyn retreat to her lab. “If I had any other options I would tell you. The most we can hope for is justice—Daniel?”

“_Aaahh!_”

Everyone within earshot physically jolted. Daniel’s cry wasn’t pained so much as fearful—a fearful Daniel Jackson was almost unheard of.

“_Grab him!_”

“_Get the cuffs! Shut that feed off!_”

These cold, unfamiliar voices were the last thing Sam Carter heard of her friend.

“Signal’s lost,” said Walter, tuning the dials. “They destroyed it. We’re not even picking up a GPS indicator.”

Sam vibrated into action. She pointed at Walter. “Keep that ‘gate open as long as you can. I don’t want these men shutting off the connection and taking Daniel somewhere.”

“I can only keep it open for thirty eight minutes,” said Walter.

“That should be plenty of time. I’m going.”

“_You_?” Walter shot her an incredulous look. “Teal’c can get to the SGC in five hours.”

Sam paused. Teal’c and Cam weren’t employed anymore, currently off on a side investigation.

“We don’t have that long,” said Sam. “This is a surgical extraction. The less people, the better.”

“If I may…” Hughes stood to his feet. “I am trained as a medic. I can treat Doctor Jackson until we get back, since Doctor Lam shouldn’t be away from her research.”

They stared at him.

He coloured. “I…I went into software engineering later. Found the medic thing too much.”

“You remember your Air Force survival training course?” asked Sam.

Hughes nodded.

“Good. Suit up, and quickly.”

Hughes ran off. Sam and Walter exhaled in unison.

“I hope you know what you’re doing,” said Walter.

Sam quirked a wry, tired, quietly hysterical brow. “So do I.”


	12. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cam, who’d gone white faced for most of this, finally found his voice. “Your son worked for the _Air Force_?”
> 
> “Sure,” said Mrs. Ackman. Her brow furrowed. “Lowell does now too.”

'Play the bugle, play the taps and  
Make your mothers proud.  
Raise your rifles to the sky, boys,  
Fire that volley loud.'

"Charlie Boy" ~ The Lumineers

Guts.

What was it about humans and guts?

Gut feelings. Gut reactions. Gut _instincts_. Teal’c glanced away from the road to his own stomach. _His _guts had housed a parasite. Now it lay empty. It didn’t feel anything unless someone struck it. 

“Gut feeling means we’re doing this on a hunch,” said Cam, reading his expression. “Didn’t O’Neill ever use that expression during missions?”

Teal’c parked the SUV and stared up at a bubble gum pink house. Cats roamed on a flowery lawn. 

“I didn’t understand it then either,” said the Jaffa.

“Ha-ha.” Cam opened his side door. Teal’c came around and unfolded the wheelchair for him. “Now you’re just messing with me. Sarcasm suits you.”

Teal’c’s lips quirked up a little. Cam eased himself into the chair and thanked God for fresh air while his back popped a satisfying percussion. 

After days combing through IOA personnel files, they’d found only one suspicious agent: a strange leave of absence request two years ago, which, when the man didn’t come back, resulted in employment termination. 

One Lowell Ackman—same name as the psychiatrist file—had requested time to _study_. It was timed perfectly with the failed mission two years ago, and had happened after.

What really threw off Teal’c and Cam was that Lowell really _did _take a sabbatical to study.

Why change careers on a dime?

Pictures were impossible to find. Lowell’s file and ID had been wiped from the IOA system. Even his university card had no photo on it. 

So they’d driven out to Ackman’s only surviving relative to crack the mystery, to see what was up with this strange, former IOA agent. 

Teal’c carried Cam, wheelchair and all, to the top of the wrap around porch. Cats purred and rubbed their legs. A grey tabby settled in Cam’s lap. 

A short, ginger haired woman answered the doorbell. “Can I help you?”

Cam showed his Air Force badge and Teal’c could only hope the woman didn’t notice it was expired. 

“Oh no,” she said. “What has my son gotten himself into this time?”

“Er…” Cam caught Teal’c’s eye. “Nothing, Mrs. Ackman. We were just wondering if you had any photos of Lowell.”

“I wish I could help you more. I only have younger photos. After his brother died he…well, work became his life.”

“When did his brother—?”

“Look at my deplorable manners!” Mrs. Ackman’s hands went to her cheeks, cutting Cam off. She seemed more fazed by her faux pas than Cam, a supposed active Air Force colonel, being in a wheelchair. “Come in, come in!”

With those words, Teal’c and Cam found themselves inside a floral living room and seated on a velvety chesterfield.

Or…_next _to the chesterfield, in Cam’s case. 

Mrs. Ackman bumbled around the kitchen and another cat joined the tabby on Cam. 

Both men glanced around the room. Mrs. Ackman hadn’t lied: there wasn’t a single photo of her surviving son after sixteen years old.

Teal’c glanced at one of a boy in braces on Christmas morning, all smiles. He was standing next to a tall, dark eyed teen, presumably Lowell’s brother. 

“Maybe my gut is wrong,” Cam said. A cat meowed at his admission.

Teal’c raised a brow. “Mine was always wrong.”

“Very funny.”

“Indeed.”

“Don’t sass me.”

“O’Neill taught me this as well.”

“Jerk.”

Teal’c opened his mouth for a retort but Mrs. Ackman bustled in, her cheeks freshly rouged. She carried a tray of molasses cookies in one hand and a teapot in the other. 

“Lemon tea?”

“Sure,” said Cam. 

“I like to dunk my cookies in it,” said Mrs. Ackman. Cam mirrored her indulgent smile and Teal’c found himself softening. He hadn’t realized he was on alert. 

For a while there was only the munching of cookies and the sip of cups. Both cats had gone to sleep on Cam’s thighs, one’s paw twitching in its sleep.

Teal’c marveled that he was millions of miles from Chulak but domestic peace looked identical between them. It warmed something in his chest. 

His _gut_, perhaps. 

“Mrs. Ackman,” said Cam, setting his cup down on the coffee table. He was careful not to wake the cats. “What exactly does your son do?”

“I’ve never been allowed to know his work. Something top secret or government, all that cloak and dagger hooey. But he worked in pharmacology for a while, I can tell you that much. It’s what he went to school for.” 

Cam frowned. “I understand that you didn’t know before. But I meant what does he do _now_? Didn’t he change careers?”

For the first time, Mrs. Ackman’s bright face dropped. She sighed. “Lowell’s older brother died sixteen years ago. The government, the Air Force, none of them would tell us anything. We never even got his body back! Lowell was just a teen. Devastated, he thought helping people’s health would keep his brother’s legacy alive. He only sank deeper into bitterness.”

She paused to dab her eyes. “Two years ago he suddenly insisted on doing software engineering with the Air Force. I assumed it was part of the grieving process…”

Cam, who’d gone white faced for most of this, finally found his voice. “Your son worked for the _Air Force_?”

“Sure,” said Mrs. Ackman. Her brow furrowed. “Lowell does now too.”

Cam and Teal’c exchanged alarmed glances. Pieces slotted together to a chorus of mental klaxons.

_Sixteen years ago…never got his body back…_

“Do you…do you have a photo of your son?” asked Cam. His voice was breathy with revelation.

“I just told you,” said Mrs. Ackman. “He’s never around and I haven’t gotten a decent picture since he was a teen.”

“Not Lowell.” Teal’c leaned forward. “Your eldest son.”

He startled when Cam’s wheelchair lurched forward. The man’s eyes were glued to a picture on the mantle, of a young man in a green boonie. He reached out, bringing it close to his face.

“No,” he whispered. “It can’t be…”

“That’s my oldest boy—”

“Reilly,” Cam finished. “_Reilly_ _Ackman_.”

“Why…yes,” said Mrs. Ackman. “How did you know that?”

“I do not understand,” said Teal’c. The name was unfamiliar to him. 

Something else on the mantle was, though. Under a picture of Lowell had been scrawled a name in permanent marker. 

“Why does it say Steel?” asked Cam. His voice was as tight as Teal’c’s fists. 

“Oh, Steel is Lowell’s middle name. I named him that after his father. Steel, my husband, died when Lowell was just an infant. My boy insists on being called Steel sometimes.”

“Mrs. Ackman, what is your maiden name?” Teal’c asked. He already knew the answer.

She blinked between them, perplexed. “I don’t see why it matters, but it’s Hughes.”

_All along, _Teal’c marveled. _Steel Hughes has been planning this all along._

Cam was already on his cell phone. “Walter, I need Sam. _Now_. It’s about Hughes—”

He swore. “They _what_?!”

“Colonel Mitchell?” Teal’c set a hand on the man’s arm and found him trembling.

“We’re too late,” Cam said. “Steel just left base with Sam.”


	13. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If someone asked Sam fifty years from now what was the most chilling sight she’d ever seen, she would answer Steel Hughes’ flinty gaze when it came to rest upon her face in concert with the gun’s barrel.
> 
> “I’m sorry, Colonel. This isn’t about you. It never was.”

'We’ll meet again,  
As often do the closest friends.  
So dry your eyes  
And lay me down,  
I tell you this is not the end.'

"This Is Not the End" ~ Claire Macguire

“Good idea, bringing the crutches,” said Sam.

Night had just fallen so she had to squint to see Hughes and his shrug.

“I’d prefer a stretcher, considering the kind of injuries we might find on Dr. Jackson, but with this uneven terrain…”

Sam nodded. “Dropping him would be a huge possibility.”

Hughes made a sound of affirmation but his eyes were on the ‘gate they’d just stepped through. It evaporated, reflecting off Hughes’ oak eyes.

“It feels weird going through your first time, huh?” Sam offered.

Hughes canted his head.

“Doesn’t it ever get strange?” His soft voice was barely audible over the squeak of their packs. “Knowing you can’t tell anyone about it?”

Sam blinked at him. “All the time, Steel. Grocery shopping is the worst, having all these people around you who think the moon landing is fake and yet you’ve traveled to other _planets_.”

He shook his head.

Sam tapped his shoulder. “Come on. Stay low.”

SG-4 set up behind them.

“Secure the ‘gate,” Sam ordered Colonel Klaus. “We should only be a minute, a get in, get out mission. Be ready to dial.”

Klaus waved his hand in a circle to alert his men. “Copy that, Colonel.”

Running in a crouch, Sam and Hughes raced through the underbrush, around trees and stumps. They’d each brought infrared binoculars. However, Sam didn’t need them at all—she pointed ahead to the orange sphere of a small bonfire.

Hughes nodded that he’d seen it too.

_Bold of them_, Sam thought, _setting up less than a half kilometer from the ‘gate._

Three men were visible to the naked eye where they ate freeze dried rations and muttered darkly. Some wore splints. Black eyes and bloody noses adorned their faces. One’s nose was clearly broken.

Sam’s brow dipped. _Daniel didn’t do all this damage by himself, did he?_

The answer to her bafflement lay five feet from the fire, in the haunted shadows of a willow tree. Sam’s breath caught.

_Jack_.

He sat against the trunk.

It was a testament to Jack’s deteriorating health that the men hadn’t even bothered to tie him up. His cracked and dry lips oozed painful sores. He shivered, surprisingly awake, yet his glazed eyes couldn’t seem to fix on anything.

They certainly didn’t fix on the _other_ man sprawled an arm’s length from him.

Blood seeped from a bullet swipe in Daniel’s thigh and another on his bound hands. He was out cold. A chunk of his hair, on the side, had been scalped clean off, probably in the struggle.

Hughes must have seen their condition too, because his body rigidified.

Sam’s blood boiled. Stark was the sight: Daniel and Jack were within contact distance and neither knew it. To keep them apart seemed a cosmic crime.

It _was _a cosmic crime.

“I’ll take care of the men,” Sam whispered, barely a breath and still shaking with rage. “You get to Jack and Daniel. Start triage while I head our black tops team off before they can retaliate.”

Hughes nodded.

As Sam moved into position, she took a moment to heed a prickle in her gut. The three men lounged without fear or guard post. They hadn’t even blindfolded their prisoners. The whole thing was laisse faire.

Assured.

Sam brought her zat gun to eye level. Slipping behind a tree, she took out all three men in the span of a breath. They never knew what hit them.

_Just like that_.

While Hughes expertly sutured the bullet wound, cutting a hole out of Daniel’s pants, Sam knelt and cupped Jack’s face. Her thumb lowered his eyelid.

His eyes barely reacted to the sudden fire light. He looked even worse up close, each pulse beat slow and uneven.

Hesitant, almost as if his heart was giving up the fight.

“Sir?” Sam tapped his cheek. “Sir…Jack?”

Jack responded to the use of his name. He narrowed his eyes. “Who’s there?”

Sam swallowed. She’d been warned by Carolyn about the drug’s attack on O’Neill’s primary senses. Even now it was making its way to his vital organs.

“I am, sir. It’s Sam.”

“Carter?” Jack glanced around. It was maddening. “I can’t…gotta find…”

“We’re taking you home,” Sam soothed. “Whatever you’re searching for, it’s over.”

Jack suddenly stiffened, from his fingernails down to his ankles. “No. Ackman.”

“Ackman?” Sam drew back. “Like the psychiatr—”

Jack had seen it first.

Sam twisted around, following the general’s eyes, and came face-to-face with the loaded end of a Glock.

Gone was the bashful intern.

Hughes stood unflinching.

If someone asked Sam fifty years from now what was the most chilling sight she’d ever seen, she would answer Steel Hughes’ flinty gaze when it came to rest upon her face in concert with the gun’s barrel.

There wasn’t an ounce of hope left in that face. He had that false calm of desperation, the inability to get attached that came across as confidence.

“What are you doing?” Sam asked softly. “Put the gun down, Hughes.”

“I’m sorry, Colonel. This isn’t about you. It never was.”

Sam tried to make sense of this twist.

“My fight isn’t with you,” said Steel. He kicked the zat out of her hand and it skittered towards the fire. “I just needed you to bring me here. Please give me your remote DHD.”

Sam’s brows pulled low, a storm cloud over the horizon of her anguished gaze. “Then who is your grievance with? Jack?”

Hughes shook his head. “Please give me the DHD.”

“No.”

Steel aimed the gun at Daniel’s head.

Sam was surprised to feel tears sting her eyes. “You sent us to that planet, two years ago. You drugged General O’Neill.”

Even more surprising were the tears that spilled over Steel’s eyes. “No one else was supposed to get hurt. I’m sorry about how Vala died, and Colonel Mitchell lost his legs.”

His gun lowered.

At first Sam felt a stirring of optimism. Maybe he was coming around!

Then she heard a grunt behind her and cursed herself for not binding the three men.

“Say goodbye to your friends,” Hughes whispered.

The last thing Sam saw before a jolt knocked her to the ground was Jack, eyes still searching.


	14. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Who are you? Really?” Daniel asked again. “When did you intersect Jack’s life?”
> 
> “I didn’t,” said Hughes. “You did. Therein is my problem.”
> 
> Daniel leaned back as if struck.

'Fighter Pilot,  
send your fire deep into the enemy...  
They wave their flags but you won't see them  
for men weren't made to fly.'

"Fighter Pilot" ~ Sanders Bohlke

Ratatouille is a stunningly beautiful dish. Oranges, pinks, reds, even some greens. Akin to the layered strata of a planet.

_Ruined_ ratatouille, however, is just about the worst, corpse-like mosaic ever witnessed.

The colours of ruined ratatouille exploded behind Daniel’s eyes when a boot connected with his broken rib.

“Up and at ‘em. We don’t have all day.”

“Boss wants to get moving.”

Daniel hated that he was starting to recognize these voices. More muttering.

Someone moaned to Daniel’s right. Wiggling his fingers, he realized surgical tape bound his wrists.

Opening his eyes seemed Herculean with the amount of effort required, but Daniel managed it.

He exhaled in relief. “Oh, Hughes. Thank goodness. Is Sam with you? I wasn’t sure how long it would take you guys to find me…”

The three men stood behind Steel Hughes and didn’t look at all concerned about it. One even clapped Steel on the shoulder.

“Good work, gentlemen,” said Hughes. “Reilly would be proud.”

The tactical team lowered their heads and nodded solemnly. Daniel’s blood ran cold. He wracked his brain to make sense of this.

They’d caught Jack too. He slumped over his knees, eyes half lidded.

Even Daniel, no medical expert, knew things were critical. The general’s furious energy of hours earlier seemed a lifetime ago.

Daniel did the mental math and sobbed—Jack only had hours left. The archaeologist trembled with exhaustion and fear.

Hughes knelt next to Daniel’s head.

Daniel tried to pull away but Hughes grabbed a fistful of his hair. “I have waited a long time for this day. Sixteen years, in fact. Can you believe it, that it should take such a long time to make things right? Now I know the truth. And you, Dr. Jackson, are going to pay for it.”

Before Daniel could process these words, Hughes yanked him to his feet—by his hair. Daniel’s headache skyrocketed. Hughes shoved a pair of crutches at Daniel and unbound his wrists so he could use them.

One of the men slung Jack over his shoulder like potatoes. The general was limp, unresponsive.

They bully marched to the ‘gate at a grueling, very telling pace. Whatever happened next, Daniel knew Hughes didn’t intend for them to live through it. Injuries were tended to only long enough to keep moving.

Though the terrain was uneven, at least the crutches kept Daniel from falling.

Small mercies.

Daniel halted altogether when they arrived at the ‘gate. His mouth dropped open and a pained cry wailed out, shattered and manic.

On the grass lay a neat row of five bodies. Blood had crusted on their foreheads.

“Sam!” Daniel tried to bolt to her.

A rough hand dragged him back by the neck but Daniel fought it. Black spots prickled his vision.

“Leave them,” said Hughes. “The SGC will be through soon enough to dispose of them.”

“What did you do?” Daniel railed. “Sam! Let me go! _Sam_!”

He was in such a frenzy that he didn’t realize they’d dialed the ‘gate. The men hauled Daniel through, still clawing and fighting.

Deja vu. This is exactly how Jack had yanked him home two years ago.

Now, the sight of Sam’s unmoving body broke Daniel’s hope.

_SG-1 is dying, one at a time._

Daniel must have hazed out because by the time he caught his breath, he was seated under a steel structure on a totally different planet. He thought of running but knew it was useless.

He’d never leave Jack here.

There were tents set up beside the stargtate, maps and SG-1 personnel files scattered across a table. No sight of Jack.

“Base camp,” said Hughes, catching his eye. “I trust you’re finished with the childish tantrums.”

“Who are you?” Daniel demanded. He coughed and something sprayed the dirt at his feet. “What do you want with Jack? Whatever he’s done—”

“You still don’t get it, do you?” Hughes looked genuinely taken aback. “Four of the greatest minds in human history and I manipulated you for two years.”

Daniel stiffened. His wrists ached…his _everything _ached.

“This was never about General O’Neill,” Hughes went on, red creeping up his neck. “He was a pawn to lure you here. Plus, I needed him to get the other Scrambler for me.”

Daniel’s eyes lowered, shifting back and forth while he thought. “I activated the first Scrambler we found. Jack could never…never make it work, not in a thousand years. I think it’s because I picked it up first.”

Hughes smiled. “Now you’re catching on. Cosmic artifacts always come with a companion. They operate like baby ducklings upon a mother, imprinted on their chooser.”

A physical start ran through Daniel. “You need Jack’s touch to activate it. It doesn’t work for you because Jack found it first.”

“There we go.”

“It isn’t safe,” said Daniel. “We could barely get back home the first time. It took us to the past, the far future—”

Steel snapped his fingers and one of the men came over with the Scrambler, the complex silver carvings on the orb glinting by a strong noon sun. The others began to pack up and load their guns with fresh rounds.

“Do you know what this says?” asked Hughes. “It took Shamda days to translate, but I’m sure your quick mind can do it in a minute.”

Daniel physically bristled, taut. “What did you do to Shamda?”

“That isn’t the point. What does it say?”

Daniel leveled a long glare at Hughes and then turned the scroll work around in his fingers, careful not to twist it. He squinted at the glyphs.

“History,” he said. “It’s talking about personal…”

His head whipped around. “This takes the imprinter—Jack—to any date in his history. _His _timeline.”

Hughes flashed a delighted, wicked smile that made Daniel’s heart sink just looking at it. Understanding came with the heavy slime of dread in his gut.

“Who are you? Really?” he asked again. “When did you intersect Jack’s life?”

“I didn’t,” said Hughes. “You did. Therein is my problem.”

Daniel leaned back as if struck.

Hughes sat down on a crate in front of Daniel and scanned Daniel’s face, brows working.

“My revenge was supposed to be over and done with two years ago, you know.” He said it quietly, with a polite inflection. “You would go to PX-725 and its temple. The hidden mechanism in the floor would release and _poof_! I would have the satisfaction of reading the mission report on your gruesome death.”

Memories assailed from every side. Daniel struggled to hear Hughes over the screams in his mind.

“I didn’t anticipate you and Vala stepping on that floor tile at the same time.”

“Jack had to make a choice,” Daniel choked out. “He…He could only grab one of us before the spears hit. And Cam…he…tried to go back in for Vala. He stepped on…the ceiling slammed down like a wall…”

Daniel’s face skewed and he hid it behind an unsteady hand.

“Jack’s instinctive response to protect you made me realize something.” Hughes leaned in, voice hot and low.

“Emotional death is so much better than physical. I didn’t have to kill you to get justice: I could suck the last measure of faith left in you. I could make you feel what I felt sixteen years ago.”

_What is he talking about?_ Daniel had met Jack sixteen years ago, but surely that couldn’t be the cause of Hughes’ bitterness.

“You two are like brothers, no?”

Daniel didn’t answer. He couldn’t.

“How would you feel if you lost him?” Hughes asked.

“I already have,” Daniel whispered. “Jack’s decision to save me instead of Vala tore us apart.”

“What if you had to watch him suffer? Slowly. Dying from the inside out…”

Daniel’s eyes widened.

“You couldn’t even tell his family how he had died light years from earth from an alien substance.” Hughes’ silky tone was coy, taunting. His face flushed a purple crimson now, all stifled heat and hatred.

“What do you want from me?” Daniel finally looked him in the eye.

“I want you the person you care about most to die while you watch, unable to do anything, and know that it was your fault.”

Daniel’s ears rang. He’d been imprisoned, beaten, nearly electrocuted to death on missions through the years but nothing…_nothing_ compared to the horror of what was happening now.

Hughes stood and addressed his men. “Get me O’Neill. It’s time to change history.”

Jack’s legs couldn’t support him anymore, so two men hooked his arms and dragged him from a hidden alcove. Hughes handed him the Scrambler and whispered something in Jack’s ear.

Jack’s pained squint dropped. He bit his lip.

Hughes stepped back. “Focus on that memory, General. You need to right a wrong.”

Jack’s listless eyes roved over the Scrambler.

“You watched Dr. Jackson do it countless times,” Hughes coaxed.

Jack snapped up. “Danny?”

“I’m right here, Jack.” Daniel swallowed. “I’m not leaving you, not this time.”

“That’s right.” Hughes seemed thrilled using Jack and Daniel’s bond to destroy them. “Twist the two cores…it can read your thoughts…”

Jack’s hands obediently twisted the two halves of the Scrambler. They parted to reveal a smaller sphere inside. He pressed the glyphs and twisted that too, in the opposite direction.

A high droning filled the air and Daniel’s hair stood on end, like he’d rubbed it with a balloon.

Clouds filled the sky.

Jack began to glow, his eyes like chevrons engaging all at once in a stunning and horrible glow of stardust. His body dematerialized in powdered sugar specks of light.

The men rushed to place a hand on him. Daniel could only gape.

_This Scrambler doesn’t need a stargate to work, like the other one_.

Jack _was _the portal this time, the portal to his own life.

“After all these years!” Hughes put a hand to his heart. He laughed, shaky. “Gentlemen, onward to the past.”


	15. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Suddenly Daniel knew when they were, with unfailing certainty. He _knew_.
> 
> “No. Nononono.” He turned to Hughes. “We can’t be here. We could mess up the past!”
> 
> Hughes sneered at him. “Exactly.”

‘How long have I known you, brother?  
Hundreds of lives, thousands of years.  
How many miles have we wandered  
Under the sky, chasing our fear?’

“Brother” ~ Lord Huron

When Daniel first materialized—picture skydiving without the parachute or even ground to fall towards—he thought Jack’s failing mind had miscalculated.

Daniel, even standing, had to arch his neck back to see it:

A pyramid. 

An honest to God, Giza-esque pyramid.

_Maybe I was wrong. Maybe this one takes people to the distant past like the first Scrambler._

As per the first Scrambler, every man had to have a hand on the activator—Jack. Otherwise they couldn’t make the trip with him.

It was almost comical to see three tactical men and a lanky software engineer palming Jack’s arms.

Daniel had only been able to grab a fistful of Hughes’ shirt but apparently that was enough. They all dematerialized in a show of golden dust.

_Or maybe Jack just took us home and happened to land in modern Egypt_.

Daniel turned. Then where were all the tourists? The archaeological digs and railings? The pickpockets?

There was no one around for miles. Only a long, sandy ramp. The desert landscape was completely undisturbed.

Then their chests began to quiver, their fingertips, their teeth. Lightning crackled in the sky.

_Not lightning…_

Suddenly Daniel knew when they were, with unfailing certainty. He _knew_.

“No. Nononono.” He turned to Hughes. “We can’t be here. We could mess up the past!”

Hughes sneered at him. “Exactly.”

Daniel coughed again. Blood sprayed the sand. His sternum heaved. He stared at Hughes in a new light.

“Reilly deserves better,” said one of the men.

Daniel’s breath left him in a rush. “Reilly…You…you’re Reilly Ackman’s _brother_?”

Hughes’ lips lifted but it wasn’t a smile. “Welcome to the program, Doctor.”

Daniel’s mind spun. Ackman. One of the soldiers who’d accompanied them on that very first mission through the ‘gate, sixteen years ago. He’d been left with another man overnight to stand guard.

_I…I’m on Abydos. _The realization came swift and blinding. Incense of the past clouded his eyes.

Daniel bowed his head to the sand, tears mixing with the crimson in his palms.

Somewhere, far in the distance, Jack and his own younger self were sharing a meal with Kasuf and the village. Daniel sobbed. In coming back to when he’d had everything—Daniel felt like he’d lost everything.

Steel was in a hurry. He hauled Daniel to his feet and ran them through a dark, ancient smelling hall at the front of the pyramid.

Hands bruised Daniel’s arms where they rocketed his stumbling steps on. Daniel tried to call Jack’s name but one of Hughes’ men struck the archaeologist across his temple.

“Reilly!” Hughes rushed ahead.

The unmistakable whir of activated rings answered him: Ra’s guards had arrived.

Everyone in the pyramid froze.

Then Steel screamed, breaking the ghastly spell. “Reilly! Reilly, hurry!”

A man came running in from the stargate’s antechamber. He had Steel’s lanky frame, the almost golden brown eyes, and for a moment the pangs of longing were palpably satiated.

Reilly’s eyes bugged. “Lowell? What are you doing here—how—?”

“None of that matters now.” Hughes gripped his brother’s arm. He wept too. “I’m here to bring you home. It’s going to be okay now because we can be a family again! Oh, Mom’s missed you so much. But you have to come before—”

It only took a split second. Just enough time for an eyelash to brush a cheek. For Daniel to glance into the shadows. Distracted, Reilly and Hughes never saw the staff weapon aimed in their direction.

Daniel fumbled to his feet. “Look out!”

He charged forward and knocked a body out of the blast’s line of fire before it landed on flesh. Someone shrieked. Chaos erupted as Hughes’ men open fired, hollering commands.

Daniel opened his eyes and realized the person under him was the source of the shrieking.

“_Reilly_!”

Hughes bucked Daniel off him.

“_Reilly_!”

He scrambled over to Reilly where he lay on his back, side smoking and eyes unseeing. Steel screamed curse words that made Daniel blush, hunched over his brother and fingers on the hunt for a pulse they wouldn’t find.

“Why didn’t you save _him_?!” Hughes’ grief was worse than any torture Daniel ever endured. Steel swung his fist back and landed a sloppy hit on Daniel’s jaw. Daniel still reeled. “You loathsome excuse of a man! Why did you choose me?”

“I didn’t. I just…”

“Everything in my life has gone wrong because of _you_! _You _opened the stargate.” He kicked Daniel’s stomach. “_You _insisted a group of men be sent through. _You _couldn’t even die according to plan!”

Bent over, hand to his head, Daniel had a good—if spinning—view of Jack.

Or lack thereof.

For one gut splitting, world crushing moment, Daniel thought Jack had abandoned him here.

Then a shock of grey hair crawled past a column on all fours. Panicked eyes still sought something and Daniel would’ve given his left arm to know what it was. What had him so fixated?

“Jack!”

“Where is he?” Jack wailed.

_Where is who?!_

Daniel didn’t realize he’d screamed this out loud until Jack’s hands snapped to the Scrambler. He sat at the base of the column and began twisting the orbs.

“No!”

Hughes and Daniel said it in unison, surging forward.

The pyramid was a swath of chaos. Staff fire singed Daniel’s arms, the tips of his hair. One shot off a corner of his eyebrow.

“Jack!” He made it just in time to grab Jack’s ankle.

It was Daniel’s first physical contact with Jack in two years.

A strangling hand grabbed Daniel’s hair and then the pyramid disappeared in a swirl of amber light.

“Oof!”

The men landed with a thump, though it wasn’t as hard or jarring as the first time.

Abydos’ dry night was replaced with grass under Daniel’s cheek. It was cool and long, due for a mowing soon.

Drizzle spattered over strange grey shapes at crooked angles in the field they’d materialized in. The gentle rain beat a tympani against oak leaves and the smooth stones.

Tombstones. They were surrounded by the peaceful, nothing silence of a cemetery.

Daniel turned at the smell of burnt flesh. Ackman knelt, surrounded by the three dead soldiers. Smoke steamed from their chests, backs, and faces.

Daniel’s gaze shuttered. “I’m so sorry, Steel.”

Steel removed a Glock from his waistband and pointed it at Daniel’s forehead. The barrel of the gun quavered.

“Say that again and you’ll be worse than my friends here. You don’t deserve a death so quick.”

“He was your brother,” said Daniel.

Hughes’ nose balled in fury. “Two years. Two years of planning for that moment and you chose me instead…it didn’t…I wanted…Reilly wasn’t supposed to die.”

His index finger twitched on the trigger.

Daniel didn’t blink. He gazed into Steel’s eyes and saw his own of two years ago. Eyes that had hated Jack for what he did.

_For the choice he made_.

Jack’s shuffling mutters broke the stalemate. Both men turned to see him kneeling by a headstone, a tiny white one. Fresh flowers and a golden teddy had been nestled beside it.

“Charlie,” Daniel breathed. “Of course. Charlie is what he’s been looking for all this time.”

Jack caressed the stone but his brow was stormy. He kept glancing around and his lips again mouthed something.

“He’s here, Jack.” Daniel dared a step closer, even with the gun now prodding his back. “Hjartamogr—_heart son_. He’s right here!”

Jack shook his head and wailed the Norse hybrid word, picked up from their earlier travels.

“Maybe he’s trying to find Charlie from a time when he was alive.”

Daniel never got to find out if he was right, because just then the sound of a truck engine caused them to jump. A hush gripped both men when they saw what it was—

From around the corner squealed a vintage 70s truck. Sitting at the wheel?

A sixteen years younger Colonel Jack O’Neill, hair uncut but in his dress blues, a little red eyed from visiting his son. Daniel almost didn’t recognize him.

Hughes lit up. “Maybe you can be of use to me after all, Doctor.”

Daniel eyed the gun warily.

“If I’m not mistaken,” Hughes continued, “O’Neill is heading for the mountain, to meet you for the very first time. Take him out of the equation and the SGC will be in a rather big tizzy, don’t you think? A dead colonel never looks good. Maybe they’ll even open an investigation.”

“What are you talking about?” Daniel snapped. He wondered if he could disarm Steel before the man could shoot him in the back.

Hughes didn’t even hear him. “All of that will discourage further exploration. Dr. Jackson, distraught I’m sure, will be put on leave. He’ll never get to work with the cartouche system again. My brother’s life will be spared…”

“You don’t know that,” Daniel insisted. “Reilly might still die on a different mission, or right here at home in a car crash, for all we know.”

“Shut up!”

Daniel was still trying to figure out how all of this tied together when Steel raised the gun. The truck zoomed towards them, headed for the main road. It was a point blank shot, less than six feet away.

In that instant, several things happened simultaneously:

Jack—_real_, present day Jack—clutched at his chest and collapsed in the grass.

His other hand squeezed and the Scrambler activated.

Daniel wrapped both hands around the barrel of the gun in a desperate, last ditch tactic.

_WH-BANG!_

Daniel collapsed on top of Jack, dragging Steel down with him. The golden light sucked them away and Hughes screeched.

Silence reigned over the cemetery once more and Colonel Jack O’Neill drove to get his haircut, being none the wiser. Oak trees fluttered in the breeze, watching over three dead men around a child’s tombstone and a soggy teddy bear.

It was their last guard post.

Daniel, however, was in too much pain to appreciate this fantasia, even when they rematerialized several thousand light years away—

The bullet had lodged in his shoulder.


	16. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack’s eyes closed. Daniel pressed his neck for a pulse.
> 
> Nothing.
> 
> “_No_!” Daniel’s body heaved with pain and sobs. “I did not search half of time and space for you to leave me now!”

‘Well I know, dear brother,  
That the sand it falls away…  
We chose our own roads  
But no matter what the cost  
No, nothing was lost—  
You are my brother and with my brother I am found.’

“Brother” ~ Royal Wood and Peter Katz

Memory and reality blurred.

They threaded a silk wave, woven and smothering and pulling Daniel under.

His hands still pushed at the gun and he fought Hughes’ attempts to shoot him again. His jaw was rebar, quivering and flexing.

He barely felt the acid in his shoulder over encroaching panic. Vala’s mutilated body flashed before his eye.’

_“Jack! Save Vala!”_

_Jack hesitated. He _hesitated. _Then he snatched Daniel around the waist and flung him back._

_Spears hailed from the ceiling, from hidden facets in the walls._

_And screaming. So much screaming._

_“Vala! Vala!”_

“How fitting,” Hughes hissed in Daniel’s ear where he knelt over Daniel. Blood pooled under their knees. “That we should return to PX-725. The planet that split you and Jack apart, where you lost your dear friend. We’ve come full circle.”

Daniel’s heart galloped. He’d lost sight of Jack. Why had Jack’s mind sent them here, of all places?

Only the temple loomed over them, the entrance still stained with Cam’s blood. Humidity choked the jungle air. This was an evil place, dense and empty of life.

Hughes’ and Daniel’s arms trembled. They hardly seemed to be moving at all but Daniel thrust his last ounce of energy into keep that gun away from his head.

“Revenge is all I have left, Dr. Jackson,” said Steel. “Time to pay your dues.”

_I’m so sorry, Jack_.

Brute strength was the only thing standing between Daniel and the end of the road. And his was fading. Fast. Death had finally arrived to claim the debt-ridden humans of SG-1.

Daniel closed his eyes and shoved.

_CRACK!_

_WH-BANG! WH-BANG!_

Bone gave under Daniel’s waning adrenaline. Shocked, he opened his eyes to see Hughes’ wide, surprised gaze. Daniel had broken his gun hand and the wrist joint.

It hung like a shepherd’s crook…

Facing inwards.

As one, Steel and Daniel looked down at Hughes’ stomach. Twin red flowers blossomed from his abdomen. The bullets burrowed in the temple at his back.

They met each other’s eyes and for a millisecond, they were just two brothers fighting for their families. Daniel saw himself, saw the bitterness, saw the longing. Every broken crack in his hope.

They were equals.

Hughes slid sideways, hit the dust, and moved no more.

Cold flushed through Daniel’s body. Something snapped inside his heart and he wondered, inside that secret room of his soul, if he should ever have opened the ‘gate at all, if there was any point in the fleshly hubris of it all.

He shivered, wet with blood, and dragged himself, army crawl style, wincing for every few inches of ground gained. It left a long, scarlet trail in his wake.

“Jack? Jack!”

“There y’are, Danny…”

Daniel scrabbled over to where Jack lay on his back under a break in the trees.

The detritus sloped around Jack, air whispering with all the tenderness of a child.

More than a thousand years and Daniel wasn’t sure he had ever truly seen Jack O’Neill, in full, until this breathless moment.

Jack, still in his leather jacket, stared at Daniel.

Daniel, body swaying, stared at Jack.

For one infinite minute, they were the only thing that existed. Daniel wondered how he had ever resented this man, the one who’d given him back a beating heart. The man _he’d_ given back a will to live. To reject suicide.

So stunned, it took Daniel a minute to realize how fragile this was and yet how utterly unbreakable:

The only thing that gave them hope to live was each other. The only thing that could take it away was the loss of each other.

And suddenly, Daniel understood.

His chest buckled.

“All this time,” Daniel sobbed, “you were looking for—”

“For _you_. You went away. I…I…couldn’t find you. I couldn’t _find _you. My hjartamogr.”

“I’m here now,” Daniel said, cupping Jack’s cheek. He sounded years younger. “I’m so sorry, Jack, for blaming Vala’s death on you.”

“I chose _you _that day,” Jack coughed. Daniel coughed too. Their blood mingled on the ground. “And I’d make that decision every time.”

There are some emotions that defy name. A conglomeration of so many moments and actions that to label them would be disrespect.

Daniel experienced one then, making pliable every last centimeter of his face.

Jack trailed off, eyes glazed. “Danny? Where’s Sam? We should be checking in with Hammond by now.”

Daniel wept. He didn’t have the heart to tell Jack that Hammond had died over five years ago.

Jack’s eyes closed. Daniel pressed his neck for a pulse.

Nothing.

“_No_!” Daniel’s body heaved with pain and sobs. “I did not search half of time and space for you to leave me now!”

He tried to pump Jack’s chest, administer CPR, but his arms gave out.

“I can’t do this without you…Even the ‘gate I…never could…”

Daniel lacked even the strength to kneel. The pain in his shoulder vanished, a sudden cut off of heat and fire, and his heart rate slowed.

He stretched out beside Jack, head on his static chest. It was a weak embrace but Daniel held on with everything he had.

“Night’s falling, Jack. Look. Here come…the…stars…”

Black closed in on Daniel. His eyes slid shut.

The world was a symphony with that ever impending fermata—their final cadence had come.

Those on Earth felt a ripple, Sam’s suspended animation. Second hands on clocks stopped around the world. The universe breathed as one and Daniel’s tears reflected the stars.

He shifted and something underneath him rolled.

_The second Scrambler. _

It was a weak hope. A dying man with a dying idea. The third layer of the Scrambler was the core, made of an unknown substance that neither he nor Jack had tried to touch. Daniel did what he had never dared in a thousand years.

He opened it.


	17. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Danny.”
> 
> The archaeologist’s cheeks lifted in a messy, sincere grin. This time real tears came.
> 
> “Jack.”
> 
> Even the names had a heartbeat. Daniel marveled that he’d never heard it before.

‘I don’t have enough heartbeats left  
To spare them on somebody  
Who never planned to see the moments pass  
Now until forever,  
Now until our last breath.’

“Heartbeats” ~ Aron Wright

Daniel pressed the glyphs and the device’s hood retracted with a whir.

And for the first time in his life, he felt fear. Not of death, though that was guaranteed and sealed the moment he opened the Scrambler. No one survived looking into its depths.

No, his fear wasn’t of life ending—

But of the stars.

For the first time, Daniel Jackson glimpsed the created cosmos and arcane terror wrenched through his body.

The dirt disappeared and all around him was only the frosty, speckled theatre of time and space. They, the stars and galaxies, were in him. He _was _them. Starlight burned through every inch of his cells.

Daniel’s mouth opened in a long scream, layered with voices. As if he were all the Daniels who had ever lived at once: the higher pitched tone of his eight year old self watching his parents die, his present, agonized self, his elderly self at the end of a lifetime he never got to live.

Daniel wondered how he had ever been foolish enough to believe that Time was a line.

Suddenly an anchor was there, thumb linked with Daniel’s thumb, fingers wrapped over his knuckles as if they were about to arm wrestle.

Daniel stared in awe.

The very ends of Jack’s hair glowed. Reds and oranges and blue and purples seeped from every pore and his eyes swirled like planetary rings. It was blinding to look at.

SpaceTime tried to tear back what was its own, but with hands linked, minds linked, it could not claim either Daniel or Jack.

All at once, Daniel heard the cacophony. _Noise_. The vibration of every star and hue and the very hum of Jack’s inner life. Jack’s grief was the most painful thing Daniel had ever experienced. He screamed again.

Jack didn’t open his mouth, but Daniel felt the thought in his fingertips and in his nostrils and the follicles of his hair:

“_Danny_.”

It pulsed in time with cosmos, clear as a PA system in Daniel’s brain but soft as a lullaby. Daniel probed into the space where Charlie used to be, trying to soothe whatever was causing this pain.

The space wasn’t empty anymore.

Daniel’s eyes snapped onto Jack’s.

“_I…I’m there_,” Daniel vibrated, shocked.

Jack’s answering hum was so pleased, proud in a fond way, that no words did it justice.

Their hands melded together in a flame of orange and rose light. The humming beats of their spirits were in perfect harmony.

Down to the last nook of Jack’s heart, his being, Daniel saw his own fingerprints all over it, each one lovingly preserved.

Daniel reached out.

So did Jack.

Daniel shed tears of light, every drop plinking into a new star. They too matched Jack’s heartbeat.

“_You are my heartbeat_,” came Jack’s hum.

The moment their souls touched, the galaxies exploded. Death shrieked back. For the first time in human history, earthly eyes glimpsed Time and came back alive.

* * *

Silence had the last word, the last laugh, for so long that it could have been an eternity.

When Daniel finally opened his lids, it was to see himself sprawled on his left side beside the Time Scrambler. Shattered fragments littered the dirt.

His limbs weighed more than he ever imagined. He lay there like a man paralyzed.

Then brown eyes met his blue across the sand. Jack lay on his right side, not three feet from Daniel where the blast had thrown them apart.

They stared at each other.

Their cracked lips had healed and Daniel no longer felt his bullet wounds. His lungs were clear. The pain in his ribs and palms had vanished. Daniel had lost his glasses at some point but suddenly no longer needed them. Every grain of sand was microscopically in focus.

The two men only had eyes for each other, their bodies glowing faintly.

They didn’t blink.

They hardly breathed.

But under Daniel’s skin, he sensed Jack’s pulse.

_Pa-pum, pa-pum, pa-pum_.

Daniel slowed his breathing so it matched that rhythm. Jack smiled faintly.

They lay there until the earth cooled. Daniel almost couldn’t fathom it, linear time, measured days. It seemed like child’s play.

Jack smiled again, as if he’d heard this thought. He probably had.

At last, when the sun was almost gone, a faint tremor in Daniel’s limbs woke him from the trance-like stupor.

Jack responded immediately. He shuffled over on all fours, all traces of the drug vanished. He touched Daniel’s forehead with his own.

“Danny.”

The archaeologist’s cheeks lifted in a messy, sincere grin. This time real tears came.

“Jack.”

Even the names had a heartbeat. Daniel marveled that he’d never heard it before.

“You saved my life,” said Jack. “Hughes would’ve gone on drugging me. He…he gave me the passcodes for the base, used my therapy appointments to plant the idea that if I found another Scrambler I’d find you.”

Daniel shook his head. “You saved my spirit.”

Jack’s eyes shone. “Takes one to know one.”

_Pa-pum, pa-pum, pa-pum_.

Daniel reached up. Jack met him half way, pulling him into his arms and thumbing the tears from Daniel’s eyes.

“I think it’s time to retire.”

“You _are _retired,” huffed Daniel into Jack’s shoulder. “But you need a break, that’s for sure. Go fishing in that fish-less lake.”

Jack cradled the back of Daniel’s head. “That’s not what I meant.”

“Maybe it is time,” said Daniel quietly. “For me to…”

His voice trailed off after a moment.

Neither could find their feet. Despite being healed, they were weak. So they sat on the ground and hugged each other like the world was ending.

It had, after all.

Suddenly, Daniel felt old around the eyes. So old it didn’t have a title. “Are we going to make it, Jack?”

Jack was silent for such a stretch that Daniel gave up waiting for a real answer. They huddled on the jungle floor for hours, Jack’s fingers hooked into the fabric of Daniel’s bloody shirt, nose in his hair.

The stars sang quietly and Daniel’s ears resonated with the sound of it all.

“You’re here,” said Jack finally. “That’s always been good enough for me.”

_Pa-pum, pa-pum, pa-pum_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I cried writing the end of this chapter, the insular profundity of their simple, messy friendship.


	18. Chapter 17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “The program is being made public.” Sam blew out a noisy breath. It lifted the bangs off her forehead. “And no more SG-1. Who knew we’d get to see this day?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to whoever made it this far, for reading the brain child of that time I woke up in cold sweat at 3 am one night. Most of this was written in a cathartic haze, honestly. SG-1 'dies,' yes, but they live on in every way that counts, and hopefully I've wrapped that up in a satisfying way.

‘I tried to tear them both apart,  
I felt a bullet in my heart…  
Your tears will fall  
To make love grow:  
The briar and the rose.’

“The Briar and the Rose” ~ The Cottars

“Unscheduled off world activation! _Unscheduled off world activation_!”

Sam bolted upright in her infirmary bed.

“Ah, ah, ah, ah!” Carolyn scrambled over. “You were walloped over the head less than twelve hours ago, Colonel. You can’t just go running off—”

Sam had already unhooked herself from the monitors, tearing them off in a haze, and sprinted down the hall. Her sock feet and scrubs didn’t garner one ounce of attention, nor the concussion bandage around her head.

Walter’s PA announcement had never sounded so excited.

It was contagious. Men and women jumped out of bunk beds and sleeping quarters, commissary tables, labs, and medical suites, and even janitors burst out of doors in a chattering clump. Teal’c handed his swaddled granddaughter to Cam and ran after Sam.

Sam didn’t stop at the control room, nor even the lab, but ran directly into the embarkation room.

“It’s PX-725’s gate address!” said Walter through the microphone.

Sam swallowed. “Open the iris!”

That hellish planet. She could still feel Cam’s weight over her shoulder in a fireman’s carry. Teal’c hurried to her side, his eyes roving even though the wormhole hadn’t locked yet.

When it did, two figures stumbled through, arms laced around each other.

There exists a perfect brand of hush, so exquisite few ever hear it in their lifetime. It descended in a mousse-thick fog over the room.

Sam didn’t move. Neither did Teal’c. Neither did the crowd in the control room.

Four faces gazed at each other.

Sixteen years of heartache and bliss and war and family filled the air.

What happened next was a moment never archived. Walter later found the footage and made copies for close friends but those five minutes were curiously scrubbed.

Daniel and Jack ran down the ramp. Sam and Teal’c opened their arms instantly and the four landed in a messy huddle on their knees. Their heads pressed together. They wept into each other’s shoulders and kissed foreheads and caressed scars, some new and many old. Daniel slurred out his joy at seeing Sam alive.

Cam wheeled to the open door, bawling in front of God and country. The baby clapped her hands.

Then Teal’c began to laugh. A full bellied sound, full of rejoicing, that they’d never heard from him before.

It echoed off the walls, rising, growing, _building._ Those in the control room erupted, deafening cheers and laughter that could be heard two floors above. The SGC had never witnessed such a happy ruckus. Papers were thrown, tears shed, hugs exchanged.

Carolyn pushed her way to the window. She glanced at Walter, then at an ambient light in the embarkation room. “Are…are they…glowing?”

Walter smiled and it highlighted twin droplets on his cheeks. “Don’t they always?”

* * *

“You have to hold her head, Jack.”

“I know that, _General _Carter.”

Sam smiled. “Not for another eight hours, I’m not.”

Jack winked at her and then at Laeyana in his arms, bouncing his knees to make the little Jaffa girl smile her gummy smile. She had her grandfather’s chocolate eyes and round cheeks, which Jack tickled mercilessly.

The four stood in the embarkation room, dressed to the nines. A private jet would take them to Washington—and to the future. Two months since Jack and Daniel’s near-death debacle and the president had at last made a decision.

“I recommended you for the project, you know.” Jack wiggled his brows. “There’s still time …”

Daniel rolled his eyes. “Jack, we’ve been over this. Sam is the best liaison. So are Teal’c and Cam and Landry. They’ll do a great job acclimatizing the world to…this.”

He gestured to the stargate at their backs.

Quiet reigned over their corner of the world. The base was empty and deserted. Everyone was on leave until the heat blew off from Landry’s televised announcement tonight, along with Sam’s private christening.

“The program is being made public.” Sam blew out a noisy breath. It lifted the bangs off her forehead. “And no more SG-1. Who knew we’d get to see this day?”

Teal’c shared a look with Daniel. The Jaffa wore a black fedora to match his black silk tie. Teal’c would show the world that not everything in space was evil, that most of it was beautiful and full of love.

“You’re the best family I’ve ever had,” said Jack, without shame or self-consciousness, and everyone got bright eyed and sniffled into their sleeves.

“The feeling is mutual,” said Teal’c.

Sam pulled Daniel into a tight embrace. Teal’c wrapped his huge arms around them both and Laeyana giggled.

A high whistle from the door got their attention. Cam threw up his hands. “You four lollygaggers are the last people left! Bunch of saps.” His eyes narrowed, fond. “We’ve got a plane to catch!”

“She’s beautiful, Teal’c,” said Daniel as Jack handed Laeyana over. “Congratulations.”

Teal’c bowed. “And congratulations on your retirement.”

Jack nudged Daniel. “Yeah. Us old fogies can do whatever we want now. You’ll see, Carter—generals can’t have as much fun.”

Sam smirked. “Ah, but if I’m to be a general, I can finally do this.”

She yanked on Jack’s tie and met his lips. Both closed their eyes. It was a melting sort of kiss, fizzing the air. They created more electricity than a nuclear plant.

Daniel rolled his eyes again but he grinned.

Jack smile was a mile wide when they pulled apart. Sam winked and sauntered out, leaving Jack and Daniel standing alone.

“You finally going to pop the question?” asked Daniel.

Jack flipped a velvet box out of his pocket.

Daniel opened it and gaped at the diamond. “You sneak! You’ve had this planned all along!”

“Bought it last week.” Jack canted his head. “If this began with a ring, it’s only fitting it should end with one.”

Daniel silently agreed, still reeling from it all, and turned to the stargate. Without his glasses, his eyes now shone, cheeks turned up in a wry smile.

Jack pressed close beside him, the heat from his arm warming Daniel.

Three long minutes passed. If anyone were to peer in, they’d see two men in a dimly lit room, gazing at the catalyst that had brought them together. One silver haired and loyal, one lanky and wise eyed.

“I’ve always doubted…but I was wrong. I don’t regret opening it.”

Jack ducked to catch Daniel’s eye. “I’m glad you did. Wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for that thing. For you.”

Daniel smiled. “In the words of Teal’c—the feeling is mutual.”

Years later, the world ate up books about the famous SG-1 and the relationship between General Jack O’Neill and Doctor Daniel Jackson. They became the monolith figures of legend. They had withstood Time’s wrath, multiple deaths, and managed to stay together across millennia of world history.

In this pocket of Time, they were none of those things.

They were the men who defeated despair.

“Feels weird to be saying goodbye,” said Daniel.

“We’re not, Danny.” Jack pulled him under one arm and tapped his temple with his own. “We’re going home.”

Daniel followed Jack to the door. They took one last look and then Daniel reached out and switched off the lights. He felt the breath catch in Jack’s lungs. With that action, Daniel had turned the last page.

Nobody ever dreamed he’d be the one to do it.

Daniel tightened his own arm around Jack. He breathed out an airy laugh—a sound of freedom.

“Jack?”

“Daniel?”

“I already am home.”

FIN

**Author's Note:**

> Written November 2016 - March 2017.


End file.
